





: • : V - 






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THINGS 



Young Men 



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A MANUAL OF THE 



Anatomy, Physiology and Hygiene of the Sexual System, 

ITS DISORDERS, AND THEIR TREATMENT, MECHANICAL, MEDICI- 
NAL, AND THROUGH GENERAL PHYSICAL CULTURE. 



BY <§HAI^LES tOOODHULL GATON, ffl. D. 



First in the order of importance is that knowledge which is necessary for the full development of our 
bodies and the preservation of our health. * * Unprovided with that instinct which enables the lower 
animals to reject the noxious and select the nutritive, man must learn even the most primary truth that 
ministers to his self-preservation. If parents were themselves sufficiently educated, most of this knowl- 
edge might be acquired at the mother's knee; but by the strangest perversion and misdirection of the 
educational forces, these most essential elements of knowledge are more neglected than any other. — 
James A. Garfielb. 

It is dangerous to showman how much he resembles the beasts, without at the same time pointing 
out to him his own greatness. It is also dangerous to show him his greatness, without pointing out his 
baseness. It is more dangerous still, to leave hiiu in ignorance of both. But it is greatly for his advant- 
age to have both set before him. —Pascal. 



ILLUSTRATED. 







' 



DES MOINES: 

MILLER, GIRTON & WATTERS, 

1&84 






Copyrighted December 2lst, J883, by Mil,l,er, Girton & Watters. 



j . 



TO MY FATHER, 

Samuel &X Gaton, D. D., 

THIS WORK IS DEDICATED 

BY" ONE WHO IS EVER PROUD TO WRITE HIMSELF 

HIS SOX. 



i 



@®\& 






CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

A few words to Boys and Young Men. Necessity of being in full sym- 
pathy|with them. Fathers ignorant and sons untaught on these sub- 
jects. Need for instruction. A book a good means for conveying it. 
The right spirit for this study. Corruption just as dangerous to the 
life of our republic as it was to the Roman Empire. The heart of a 
boy. Its right to know the laws of Being 15 

CHAPTER II. 

SAUNTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 

To be skipped by those who read listlessly. How to read rightly. The 
opinion of F. B. Perkins, the noted librarian. The same from Chas. 
F. Richardson. The same from Rev. Edward Everett Hale. Abra- 
ham Lincoln's books and reading. Theodore Parker. Matter. Or- 
ganic and inorganic. What is matter? What is life? Brande. Rich- 
erand. De Blainville. Herbert Spencer. Huxley. Matter wedded 
to life. Biogenesis and Abiogenesis. Spontaneous generation. An- 
cient philosophies. Francesco Redi. The Atom. The Cell. Dis- 
eases caused by minute organisms. Smut of wheat. Grape disease. 
Potato disease. The house-fly's enemy, the Empusa Muscae. Begins 
in minute corpuscles. Darwin and Abiogenesis. The origin of 
species. Huxley on same. Science and Religion. Tyndall on. 
Huxley ditto. Dr. Woolsey on moderation. Bishop Simpson on the 
joining of matter and spirit in organized matter. The wonderful vari- 
ety of forms. The unity of life. The unity of matter. Protoplasm. 
The physical basis of life. Huxley's lecture on the same. Functions 
of Living Matter. The Nutritive. The Reproductive. The Motive. 
Quatrefages on the Unstable Equilibrium of Life -- 

CHAPTER III. 

REPRODUCTION. 

Universal attraction existing between male and female. The enormous 
number of living beings in earth, air and sea. Sir John Lubbock on 
the number of species. The law of Death Counter balanced by 
Reproduction. The greatness of the work. Methods of Reproduc- 
tion. The Cell. Everything dependent upon Cell activity. Repro- 
duction by Fission. By Gemmation. By Ovulation. The Moner. 
Bulbs. The Egg. What it really is. The Yelk. The "White." 



2a 



8 CONTENTS. 

The Little Yelk, or Germinal Spot. The essential part. The Human 
Egg. The similarity of the three methods of Reproduction. Male 
and female united in lower organisms. In the higher, divided. Half 
given to one individual and half to another. In this way distinction 
of male and female comes about. Prof. Wilder on. Julien Joseph 
Virey on. Flowers the reproductive apparatus of the plant. What 
is bound up in the two specks of Protoplasm. Darwin on. The 
protection of Seeds. The position of the Reproductive Apparatus. 
The dignity of Reproduction. The Crown of Woman. Claude Ber- 
nard on the connecting links between Reproduction and Nutrition. 
Researches of Schleiden. Of Schwann. The Blastoderm. Embry- 
onic Cells. H. Muller and Ranvier on Development of Bone. 
Autonomy of the Elements. Investigations of Duhamel and Flour- 
ens. Loss and Reproduction of Parts of Body in Lower Organisms. 
A limit to Subdivision. The Lizard. Experiments of Legros. Of 
De Sinety. Regeneration of Nerves. The General Law. Redinte- 
. gration and Regeneration 57 

CHAPTER IV. 

ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 

The Anatomy of General Form. Of the Knife. Of the Microscope. 
Galen on Anatomy. Valsalva and the Ear. Inauguration of New 
Beings confided to us. It begins in a Protoplasmic Mass. The Sex- 
ual System Devoted to its Production. Its organs partly within, 
partly without, the pelvis. Scrotum. Testes. Close packing of con- 
tents of Abdomen. The varying size of some of its organs. Con- 
struction of Scrotum. The Tunics of the Testes. The Testis a 
gland. Weight. The frame-work of connective tissue. The com- 
partments. The tubes. The Epididymis. The Vasa Defferentia. 
The Seminal Vesicles. The Prostate gland. Cowper's glands. The 
Spermatozoids or Zoosperms. Formed in the Testes. Receive ad- 
ditions from various glands. Opinion of Acton. The manner of 
discharge. Excitement of male organ. The Glans. Its great sup- 
ply of Nerves. Lavish use of nervous force. The Veru Montanum. 
The bulb. The Bulbo-Cavernosus Muscle. Ejaculation. Kobelt's 
account. P^pose following. One ounce semen equivalent to forty 
ounces bloou Bede on Vigor. Horace Mann on the same. Care of 
the Reproductive organs. Suspension of Testes in Scrotum. The 
suspensory bandage. Left testis hangs lower than right. Opinion 
of Sir Benj. C. Brodie. Size of Penis. In the athletes of old. Ar- 
rested development. The Prepuce. Its frequent malformation. The 
disorders it causes. The reason. The Smegma. Cleansing with 
water. Ignoi nance of need of so doing. Circumcision. Benefits of. 
Sensitiveness of Mucous surfaces. A useful pursuit. A care for 
physical culture. Involuntary emissions. Considered at length else- 
where. Importance of the bath. Sponge baths. Hot or cold water. 
Proper time for bath. Inductive to sleep 85 



CONTENTS. 9 

CHAPTER V. 

THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

What is balance. Balance of forces in Man. The Intellectual balance. 
The Physical balance. The Mutual Reactions of the Mental and 
Physical. Their relative importance. Physical Degeneration. The 
Doctor's duty. Huxley's idea. True health. Symmetrical training. 
Opinion of Capt. Burton, the African explorer. The Colleges' neg- 
lect of the body. Garfield's views. Horace Mann ditto. Care of 
Ancient Greeks for physical culture. Plato's assertion. The Chinese 
idea. Charles Sumner's opinion. Physical disability. Feasibility of 
teaching students how to be strong. Results of West Point Training. 
Prof. Sargent's Views, Gymnasium work of the Y. M. C. A. Sir 
Walter Scott's early Life. Chancellor Kent's story of his early train- 
ing. Health and spirits unfaltering at sixty-nine. Herbert Spencer. 
Gibbon and Self-Education. Capacity for work measured by bodily 
vigor. Great men and their lusty frames. The cant about artificial 
conditions. Tension and strain. Wellington. Lincoln. Grant. Lee. 
Garfield. Opinion of Geo. B. Loring. What you should do for your- 
self. Same general principles apply to all. Rest. Sleep. Prof. 
Blackie on. Time for sleep. Pestalozzie on the sleep of children. 
Maclaren on sleep. What a Bank President says. Franklin on air- 
baths. Thackeray's opinion. Food. Fresh air as food. Haller on. 
Jean Paul ditto. Dr. F. H. Hamilton ditto. Artificial heat. The 
wise way of working. Exercise. Imperatively needful. Worth of a 
good physique. Huxley on. Opinion of President Eliot. College 
Athletics. Rowing. Foot ball. Base ball. Opinion of a Yale oars- 
man. Maclaren, of Oxford Gymnasium, on exercise. Its merits and 
demerits. The philosophy of. Exercise outside of Colleges. For the 
business man. Must be exhilarating. Du Bois-Reymond. Fast 
horses. Home gymnasiums. Daily exercise for young men. For 
business men. Walking. Indian clubs. Bean bags. The Bicycle. 
The Saddle. Games and Gymnastics. Angling. Lawn Tennis. Ball 
and bat. Skating. Swimming. Sailing. The element of danger. 
Ill-balanced Development. Pres. Eliot on success. Kant. Tourgee. 
Bryant. Delane, of the London Times. George Sand. ^Humboldt. 
Leonardo da Vinci. Margaret Fuller. Wordsworth. J 1 ,ige Kelley. 
Herodotus. Boerhaave. Bichat. Cicero. Helvetius. Duke of Wel- 
lington. Dean Swift. Horace Bushnell. Rufus Choate. Martin 
Luther. Bismarck. Avoidance of wrong. The dignity of manual 
labor ... _. 115 

CHAPTER VI. 

CELIBACY. 

Celibacy and marriage. Laudable celibacy. Dishonorable celibacy. 
Laws of all times honor marriage and stigmatize celibacy. Bachelors 
among the Jews. The Spartans. The Romans. The Germans. The 
Swiss. The Turks. All men must be celibates for a time. Causes 



10 CONTENTS. 

of laudable celibacy. Winsome crown of wife and children. Isolation 
vs. Character. The family the natural way of life. Culture by dis- 
cipline. John Sargeant on discipline. Samuel Smiles on character. 
Prof. Huxley ditto. The discipline of celibacy. It is two-fold. The 
curbing of appetite. Cultivation of self-control. Desire for life the 
strongest instinct. The reproductive desire second. The frequency 
of the test. Saying of St. Antoine. Device of St. Benedict. Of St. 
Peter of Alcantara. Honor due Roman Catholics. The school of 
self-mastery. Acton on mental chastity. Dr. J. G-. Holland ditto. 
Dr. Dio Lewis ditto. Legitimate exercise of function followed by 
repose. The engorgement of mere excitement. Its reaction upon 
the nervous system. Upon the apparatus itself. Celibacy consistent 
with health. Hufeland's opinion. The dissolute die early. Aids to 
continence. Physical exercise. Testimony of university students. 
Bath. Sleep, Regularity of evacuations. Mental exercise. A men- 
tally absorbing pursuit. Excessive mental work. Overwork vs, 
Employment. Carpenter on mental effort. A preoccupied mind 
and body. The "card plan." Disgust. A medical student's ruse. 
A clergyman's method. Confession. Device of St. Philip Neri. 
The false coloring of mystery. Prayer. O. B. Frothingham. "Fel- 
lows" of the English schools. Their celibate life. Its object. Self 
sacrifice of a celibate life. Supposed deterioration. An unfounded 
impression. Celibacy a wholesome test of the best and strongest. 
Training for the conflict. The battle everywhere the same. True 
nobility independent of marital considerations 

CHAPTER VII. 

MARRIAGE. 

Difficulties of discussion. Tholuck on. Jeremy Taylor ditto. Huxley 
on duty. The estimate placed upon marriage. In various countries 
and different ages. In law. Emerson on. Practical philosophy of 
marriage. Emerson again. Theodore Parker. Dryden's way of 
putting it. Love's work. Privileges of. The home what you choose 
to make it. The livelihood. The one companion. The choice from 
all the world. Sentiment vs. Sentimentality. The trust conferred. 
The new inspiration. The preparation. The wedding. Schiller on 
married life. The Bachelor idea. Arguments pro and con. Devo- 
tion. Women in the Universities. Helen Taylor. Caroline Herschel. 
Grace Darling. Joan of Arc. Florence Nightingale. Ranavalona. 
The saying of Wendell Phillips. Mistaken conceptions. Bacon on 
love. Discord and harmony. Carlyle on the humble duties of every 
day. Pleasure as a pursuit. Love is vicarious. Recreation vs. Pas- 
time. Horace Bushnell on work and play. Bryant's letter to his 
Mother. Objects of marriage. Obstacles to. Consanguinity. Mar- 
riage of cousins. Sir John Lubbock on the practices of plants. 
Hereditary disease. Consumption and insanity. Dr. B. W. Rich- 
ardson's opinion. The proper age. Dr. Pratt's opinion. Difference 



CONTENTS. 11 

in age between husband and wife. Waiting. Engagement. Should 
it be long or short ? Acton on. Bourgeois ditto. The ancient cus- 
tom of betrothals. Advantages of. The stimulus of Love. The 
painter Quyntyn. The testimony of Dickens. The doubt of stability 
of affection. Plutarch on "love founded upon beauty." The value 
and meaning of beauty. Opinion of Sidney Smith. Of John G. 
Whittier. Of Ficino. Of Acton. Of Bronson Alcott. Of Emerson. 
Beauty of Person and of Spirit. Socrates. Descartes. Opinion of 
Michael Angelo. A legend of Abraham. Dean Stanley's poem. 
Necessity for health. Franklin's advice. Safe wife-choosing. Real 
acquaintance. Must choose for yourself. Be demonstrative. Rules 
for the husband. " Every promise of the soul has its fulfilment." 
What income makes it safe to marry ? Michelet's opinion. Brave 
home-founding. Marriage for money. Burdette's advice. The wed- 
ding trip. The wife's income. The honor belonging to the reproduc- 
tive function. Wrong home-teaching. The highest physical enjoy- 
ment. The first exercise of the function. Need for gentleness. The 
golden rule. Dr. Flint's statement. Dr. Guernsey's caution. Dr. 
Naphey's. Mrs. Duffel's. Michelet's. Patience. Quaint words of 
Jeremy Taylor. The wisdom of Chaucer. Fear of adversity. The 
coming of old age. The highest physical expression of affection a 
matter of expense to the economy. A valuable fluid. An expendi- 
ture of nervous force. How often to be indulged. Turkish law. 
Solon's law. Acton's opinion. Difference between the Englishman 
and the American. Consequences of excess. Opinion of Dr. H. C. 
Wood. Pleasure goes with Temperance. The folly of separate 
rooms. Lallemand's rule. Coitus during Pregnancy. What Dr. 
Livingstone says. Children. The popular view. An unlimited 
family. Time when conception is unlikely. Abstinence. Artificial 
preventives of conception ruinous to health. Parental instinct. 
Lincoln's saying. Theodore Parker's way of putting it. Ruskin's 
way. Motherhood means health. Napoleon's opinion. Home life 
of Prussia's Queen. Hereditary influence of tobacco and alcohol. 
Worthy children. Healthy babies vs. cross ones. John Hunter's say- 
ing. Giving the children a start in the world. Whately's opinion. 
Garfield's. George Herbert's. And the wife grows ever more lovely 
and more lovable _- 338 

CHAPTER VIII. 

SELF-ABUSE. 

Disorders of the generative system. Not due to ordinary disease. But 
to violation of nature's laws. Transgression, not misfortune. The 
number of wrecks. Opinion of teachers. The various expressions 
of vice. Two classes of disorders. Those dependant upon solitary 
vice. Upon illicit sexual intercourse. Masturbation, onanism or self- 
abuse. Definition. Habit, when formed. After puberty seminal 
discharge. Development of over-sensitiveness. Dreams and emis- 



12 CONTENTS. 

sions. Downward progression. Loss of tone. Spermatorrhoea. Ex- 
tent of the evil. The possibilities wrapped up in a boy. Lack of in- 
struction. Fathers and physcians at fault. Must be taught self- 
control. School-teachers, What one of them says. Effects of castra- 
tion. How evil habits are formed. Value of sympathy. Trust the 
boys. Why is abuse followed by disaster? The signs of danger. A 
fugitive quality. Hesitation and sluggishness. Seeking solitude. Fur- 
tiveness. The results as seen by a teacher. Erb on these excesses. 
Hammond ditto. Hart ditto. Inflammation of the brain. 
Spinal paralysis. Locomotor Ataxia. Softening of spinal cord. 
Epilepsy. Chorea. Melancholia. Mania. Dementia. Statistics of 
epilepsy. Prevalence of the vice in the schools. Watson on these 
consequences. Insanity. Its relation to masturbation. Does mas- 
turbation lead to it? Testimony of Supt. Hill of the Iowa Insane Hos- 
pital at Independence. Of Dr. Samuel Worcester. Of Dr. Small. 
Of Dr. John Ware. Of Sup. Talcott of New York State Asylum at 
Middletown. Of Dr. William A. Hammond. Of Dr. Roberts Bartholow. 
Of Supt. Gray of Utica, New York, Asylum. Of Dr. Coulston. Of 
Dr. Henry Maudsley. Of Drs. Bucknill and Tuke. Of Schroeder 
von der Kolk. Of Dr. Skae. Of Dr. Acton. Of Dr. Bourgeois. 
Of Count Joseph de Maistre. A letter from an educator. Words from 
an old teacher. The curse of purposelessness. Opinion of Dr. Harts- 
horne. Emerson's "One Evil in Life." Dissipation of the intellectual 
powers. Not the function, but its abuse. Abuse of power. The 
change in the boy at school. The young man at college. In business. 
An unaccoutable failure. The pity of it all. Spectres of men. The 
imagination. The highest of mental powers. Anecdote of Gen. R. E, 
Lee. Opinion of Reveille- Parise. The possibility of restoration. 
Sextual precocity. How to prevent. Proper age for parental instruc- 
tion. Herbert Spencer on the aim of parental discipline. Boys to 
work for. A relative matter. Innocence of occasional seminal loss. 
Difference between normal and abnormal. Refuse to stand guard over 
function. Spermatphobia. The local lesions. The prostatic Urethra. 
The ejaculatory ducts. Hyperesthesia of this region. A dispute. 
Opinion of Dr. Gross. The local cause. Change in the quality of repro- 
ductive fluid. Bartholow on. Stricture. Impotence. Loss of tone. 
Physician must overcome the irritation. Patient must renounce habit. 
Each must help the other. Acton's Method. A better one. The 
sound. Internal remedies. Of marked value. Their indications, 
dose and preparation. Incessant occupation. Mind and body not 
aliens, but allies. Excessive walking. Boerhaave's secret. Prof. 
Blackie's advice. The bath. Local and general. Bed-time. The 
dance. The theater. Habits of reading. Tea and coffee. Tobacco. 
Alcoholic drinks. The special vs. the general. What is needful. An 
ancient story __ 454 



CONTENTS. 13 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 

Origin of the word "venereal." The three venereal diseases. Dependent 
upon a specific animal poison. They follow the profligate. Their 
ravages as old as the centuries. Terrific penalties. Natural law. 
Pleasure is rightful. Pain masquerading as pleasure. The four things 
which should be taught. 1. That the Bible. gives an accurate account 
of the vice. 2. That the evil exists and is practical. 3. That men of 
affairs are alive to the danger. 4. Just what the diseases are. The 
Mosaic law. Solomon's testimony. His experiment. A good picture 
of Broadway and the Bowery. The youth certain to meet the temp- 
tation. How it is in New York. In a smaller city. In a country 
village. The boyhood experience of Dr. Talmage. What Dr. Holland 
says. The way "Gath" sees it. A sermon from the Chicago Times. 
The physical penalties. Gonorrhoea. Cause, Symptoms. Duration. 
Stricture. Treatment. Injections. Hot water. Complications. 
Ophthalmia. Rheumatism. Inflammations. Posibility of non-specific 
attack. Chancroid. Comparatively a small matter. Its frightful re- 
semblance. Its peculiarities. Treatment. Syphilis. Its hideous prom- 
inence. Its never-ending taint. When did it first appear? The seige 
of Naples. The Marranes. The theory of its American origin. Traces 
of syphilis in prehistoric skeletons. Accounts in early Chinese and 
Japanese medical literature. The primary stage. The sore. The bubo. 
The secondary stage. Affections of the skin and mucous membranes. 
- The fever. Tertiary syphilis. The stage of destruction. Its appall- 
ing ravages. Some pictures of its work. Is it ever cured? Conflict- 
ing opinions. Hereditary Syphilis. Its characteristics. Opinion 
of Drs. Yan Buren and Keyes on the duration of syphilis. Of Dr. B. 
W. Richardson. Treatment. But few drugs found to be of service. 
Sin and death go hand in hand. A dark and a bright picture. The 
possibility of a noble life 539 

APPENDIX A. — Indian Club exercise as adopted by British army, with 
additions. _ _, 

APPENDIX B. — Swedish movement cure, with prescriptions. System 
of Prof. Hartelius of Stockholm _ 

APPENDIX C. — System of physical culture of Archibald Maclaren, of 
the University Gymnasium, Oxford 



{& 






G&^SZ) 



CHAPTER 1 



INTRODUCTORY. 

I want to say a few plain, kind, earnest words to the boys and 
young men of our beloved republic. I put them together, boys 
and young men. Not because I have forgotten that on the one 
hand boys are ambitious to be known as men, and with sensi- 
tive jealousy claim the fullest recognition of every mile-post 
which they have passed, and that on the other, young men are 
equally sensitive as to their newly earned title of man as dis- 
tinguished from that of boy — not at all. But because as the 
years go by the young man will find that the "boy" within him 
is the jolliest, truest, most whole-souled part of him, and 
because the boy, the boy worthy of the name, possesses all the 
manly qualities of the man. Pope's definition, " Worth makes 
the man, the want of it the fellow," has been ringing down 
through the "corridors of time" ever since he wrote it, with 
that acclaim which the vox populi ever gives to truthful utter- 
ances. It is true alike of fifteen and of fifty, if we are to esti- 
mate alone by the flight of years. So I speak to the coming 
men of the republic, passing over the artificial distinction of 
years, dwelling upon a single sudject which is of interest alike 
to the young and the old, to all who have passed the technical 
childhood known to medicine, and set foot within the unknown 
land of puberty. To this delightsome land I trust you will find 
the following pages a faithful guide-book. 

I do not think I am deceived in the happy confidence that I 
am in full sympathy with those to whom I fain would speak. I 
only ask to speak because of that very sympathy. For with the 
training and experience which a physician's daily work of 



16 INTRODUCTORY. 

necessity brings to him, it cannot be otherwise than that much 
shall be learned which all boys and young men should know, 
and I think what the knowledge would have been worth to me 
in days bygone, think how it must be learned in the dread 
school of experience unless the fathers or the doctors volunteer 
the information. The first thought certainly is that the work 
belongs of right to the fathers, and yet not one father in a hun- 
dred gives his sons any instruction whatever on this subject, so 
ennobling, so all-important, so far-reaching in its relations and 
consequences, and in which more than any other are wrapped 
up the things which belong to their physical peace. The reason 
for this state of affairs is not hard to find. You remember in 
Judge Tourgee's work, "Bricks without straw," Eliab Hill, in 
his talk with his teacher, quotes the line from tennyson, 
"Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean," and tells of 
his failure to intuitively grasp its meaning, thus illustrating the 
tremendous impetus obtained by free and intelligent races from 
that unseen and unrecognized force which might be termed 
hereditary education. But if we have inherited the culture of 
the ages, so slso have we had to meet and conquer slowly and 
with hesitancy, the prejudices of the early days which have 
in like manner been handed down to us. It has been a 
slow and tedious progression which has brought astronomy 
out of astrology, chemistry out of alchemy, truth out of 
superstition. The old idea that ignorance and inocence 
went hand in band, and that ignorance could not be 
taught save as innocence should be distroyed. has been 
conquered but slowly and painfully. The last stand for it 
has been made on the ground of the reproductive system, the 
position being tacitly held that young men and women never 
thought about such things, and to volunteer any instruction in 
such matters would be to wantonly destroy the perfumed inno- 
cence of childhood, as one might strike the delicate bloom 
from the plumb by a careless motion of the hand. 



INTRODUCTORY. 17 

Have we not had quite enough of the "perfume" and 
"bloom" theories? Have they not held their fateful sway 
long enough, while the sons, who should have grown up as 
plants in their youth, and the daughters, who should have been 
as corner stones polished after the similitude of a palace, have 
had the bloom of youth fade from their cheeks and the " incense- 
breathing morn " of youth depart from their lives, to be suc- 
ceeded by the jaundiced countenance of ill-health, and the foul 
breath of disease — all for the lack of a little kindly instruction ? 
Professional and popular sentiment have joined hand in hand in 
this mistaken course until recent years, and, strange as it may 
seem, rarely is there heard within the walls of any medical 
school of any "pathy" a single lecture on the physiology of 
reproduction as applied to the practical every-day life of men 
and women, although the physician cannot practice a day with- 
out encountering the need for just such instruction on the part 
of his patients. So, with the prevailing sentiment tabooing 
the subject came naturally the suppression of discussion, and 
with the suppression of discussion came its inevitable conse- 
quence, ignorance ; and ignorance instructs no man. Here, 
then, we have at once the double cause of the father's Silence. 
He had the precedent of his own case. His father had said 
nothing to him — why should he instruct his son ? And again, 
not having been himself instructed, he is more or less ineligible 
as an instructor for his son. Should the son become anxious 
about himself and apply to the doctor, he was but too likely to 
meet with the reply given by an old practitioner a few weeks 
ago, to a young man who consulted him. " Oh, yes," said he, 
"most young men get scared about themselves ; " and dismissed 
the subject. Yet he was the family physician. But this is a 
picture of what has been. Now a generous public welcomes 
heartily any information on this topic. The doctor meets the 
honest seeker after truth with ready sympathy and kindly 
counsel. Yet still the fathers do not speak, and perhaps they 

(2) 



18 INTRODUCTORY. 

ma} 7 be right. For often the silent, printed page can speak 
more eloquently, more pointedly than word of mouth. For if 
nearest friends do speak to us of these things, the unconfessed 
fear that they may essay to enter the holy of holies within us, 
which admits no high priest save ourselves only, may put us in 
an attitude not quite receptive and unconstrained ; while the 
printing press delivers its message with no prying glance into 
the expressive face, nor sinister questioning of the thoughts of 
the heart. As, then, the fathers have by their silence asked us 
to speak, is it asking too great a favor that you sit down alone 
with these pages as you would with your own trusted family 
physician, that we may learn together with reverent mind that 
which it is most important for us to know ? 

Let it be insisted upon that we bring to our study the rever- 
ent mind. I have sometimes thought that the greatest weak- 
ness of our day is irreverence. If we but stop to think we are 
at once assured that our strong men, men of note in science, in 
letters, in everything, are reverent men. Mr. Ingersoll is often 
spoken of as the type of the irreverence of our age, and yet in 
his best moments he is most reverent. Listen while he speaks 
from the side of his dead brother: "Life is a narrow vale 
between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive 
in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the 
only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless 
lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word ; but in the 
night of death hope sees a star and listening love can hear the 
rustle of a wing." Surely these are reverent words ; more than 
this, they are strong words. We are so often compelled to 
listen to the jeering and irreverent word, omnipresent in the 
shop, the store, the office, the hotel, and on the railway train, 
ruthlessly profaning the most sacred things of life as though 
it were evidence of strength of mind so to do, that we must 
needs ever remind ourselves that the vulgar is weak and the 
pure strong. For every unseemly joke and shameless story to 



INTRODUCTORY. 19 

which we must perforce lend an unwilling ear, carries with it 
the implied lie that it is the badge of an independent mind to 
laugh at and make sport of the most hallowed of life's posses- 
sions. Whereas, the false and vile is pitiably weak, while 
' ' Truth is mighty and will prevail. ' ' 

Historians tell us that it was this same pitiful weakness of 
false life which worked the inevitable decline and fall of the 
Roman Empire. Corrupting first the family and society, the 
hideous corrosion ate its way remorselessly into the very unit 
and foundation of government, until Rome fell to pieces from 
its own rotten weight. I have said that I desired greatly to 
speak to the youcg men of our Republic, of our beloved country. 
No itching for a well-rounded and resounding sentence dictated 
that phrase. None but the physicians of the land can ever 
know how well-nigh universally its boys and young men have 
wandered into by and forbidden paths, and if all-powerful 
Rome succumbed to social rottenness, what is to become of our 
own great Republic under like conditions ? Some six years 
ago, when financial heresies were most rampant, our lamented 
President Garfield wrote a ringing article for the New York 
In dependent , his opening sentence being this: " 'Never to 
despair of the Republic ' is the first lesson of patriotism and 
the highest duty of the citizen." That is it exactly. He 
spoke in full view of the dangers which threatened our national 
credit ; we speak in full view of the dangers which threaten 
that unit of government, the family. And shall we not take up 
his own sturdy battle cry of freedom and wake the echoes again 
and again with the shout of "Never despair of the Republic" 
as we face this other danger ; remembering that much of this 
transgression has been done "ignorantly in unbelief," and that 
with reverent enlightenment it shall be ours to add that other 
triumphant exclamation, " The truth has made us free." 

Let me say farther, that that man is irretrievably lost, who 
has not the highest respect for the audience to whom he would 



20 INTRODUCTORY. 

speak. The man who opens his lips to talk down to the wait- 
ing multitude has made failure most lamentable before he has 
uttered a word. It is a wonderful privilege which is given a 
man when he is permitted to speak to an expectant crowd of 
eager faces, who are waiting to be instructed, hungering to be 
fed, longing to be thrilled with the presentation of that which 
he has worked out for them while their time and strength 
have been spent faithfully in other duties, else they had been 
able to do better, perchance, for themselves what it is his pre- 
rogative to do for them. I have the most unbounded admira- 
tion for that august assemblage to which I would speak ; which 
I should not attempt to address did not these my peers have a 
right to expect of me whatever I might be able to offer them as 
the fruit of special training in a single direction. For this 
world of ours is a great commune in the noblest sense of that 
rather disgraced word, and every advance of civilization but 
tends to perfect our true communism. 

Some wise man has exclaimed, u Who can know the heart of 
a boy ! ' ' Ah, the heart of a boy is a most sacred thing. Its 
ambitions, its aspirations, its loves, its longings, its chivalry, it& 
intuitive admiration for all that is noblest, truest, and best, who 
can fathom ? Who can ever estimate how many true, boyish 
hearts have been thrilled beyond expression by the "pieces " in 
that old "McGuffey's High School Keader ? " No teacher 
or examining committee can ever know. How well I remember 
my own experience. To ' ' read in school ' ' was a fiery trial in 
both the internal and external meaning of the words. The 
mantling flush which made my very ears tingle, was ample 
justification of the external. We used to call it "getting hot." 
And the outward sign was no exaggeration of the mingled dif- 
fidence, admiration for the piece, and miserable consciousness of 
failure to reach my ideal rendering which burned within. We 
boys were awkward and vandal readers enough when we read 
before the school, but no master of rhetoric and elocution will 



INTRODUCTORY. 21 

ever approach the rendering which the greathearted boys have 
all along been giving the selections in the old readers, in those 
still hours when that ruder voice which speaks to the external 
world was superceded by the matchless inner voice, filling with 
perfect cadence the marble halls of the soul's innermost temple. 
There has " Spartacus " had its only perfect rendition ; there 
alone has the " Polish Boy" been adequately voiced; there, 
-and there only, have the " Bells," silver, golden, brazen and 
iron, spoken with perfect tone and meaning. The world will 
never know what it owes to this true-heartedness which it has 
never guessed, and which never has and never will find outward 
expression . To this true-heartedness I dedicate these pages, 
knowing full well that I am perfectly safe in entrusting to its 
censorship the revealings it contains of nature's laws and nature's 
penalties. Those to whom sacred trusts are committed are ever 
ennobled by their faithful keeping, and I commit these pages to 
your keeping, confident that whatever new trust they may bring 
to you will be so faithfully kept that all shall recognize that not 
the ignorant, but the instructed young man is the noblest 
Koman of them all. 

The story is told of M. Kane, who was mayor of Paris during 
the tempestuous days of 1870, that one day he wished to enter 
the Palace of the Corps Legislatif, but was halted by the guard 
who told him that he could not enter without a written order 
from the mayor. u But I am the mayor himself," urged M. 
Banc. " Can't help it," insisted the guard, " my orders are 
to let no one pass without a written order from the mayor." 
So the mayor tore a leaf from his memorandum book and wrote 
upon it, " Let me pass. M. Kane, mayor;" and instantly the 
guard bowed him in with every token of respect. It was but a 
minor incident of those excited days, yet the fact thus forcibly 
presented that his own official character was the one power 
which could give him entrance to that jealously guarded cham- 
ber, is an apt illustration of that other fact that true nobility of 



i 



WZ INTRODUCTORY. 

character can alone give us a passport to all that is true and 
beautiful and good in life. Friends and money and power can 
no more give us this passport, than they can give the blind 
passports to the glories of the Alps. Even so I trust that no 
one will pass on to the perusal of the following pages who feels 
that he is skulking where he has no right to be, but that all 
may be enabled by the supreme authority of their own sover- 
eign nobility of character to issue the imperative command, 
"Let me pass." 



CHAPTER II. 



SAUNTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 

In the very first sentence of this chapter I warn all those who 
read for entertainment alone, without any mental exertion on 
their part being either expected or desired, to skip it entire 
from the first word to the last. Not that I would be understood 
as throwing doubt on the intrinsic interest of the topic in hand, 
for I know of none which possesses an interest more absorbing. 
But without close attention, and that mental honesty which lets 
no sentence and no phrase pass until thoroughly understood 
and comprehended, we shall gain neither knowledge nor enter- 
tainment. This may seem a needless repetition of acknowl- 
edged axiom, and yet practically a vast number of so-called 
readers deny its truth, for they will throw aside a volume as 
stupid and unworthy of them because the meaning in its lines 
cannot be grasped as rapidly as the eye can recognize the 
printed words. Others feel that nothing has been accomplished 
unless they have, to use their own expression, of such charm- 
ingly unconscious aptitude, "gone over" a certain number of 
pages. Doubtless this unfortunate method of estimating the 
amount of reading done by the number of pages turned, is due 
in part to an undisciplined zeal, which, in the desire to be well- 
read, attempts to read everything that anybody and every- 
body recommends. u It should always be borne in mind that 
the busiest reader must leave unread all but a mere fraction of 
the good books in the world. ' Be not alarmed because so many 
books are recommended,' says Bishop Potter; and ' do not 
attempt to read much or fast;' but i dare to be ignorant of 



24: SAUNTERHSTGS IN BIOLOGY. 

many things.' There are now 1,100,000 printed books in the 
library of the British Museum alone; and the library of the 
Bibliotheque Rationale of Paris contains more than 3,000,000 
volumes. Mr. F. B. Perkins, an experienced Librarian, esti- 
mates that not less than 25,000 new books now appear annually; 
and yet the reading of a book a fortnight, or say twenty-five 
books a year, is quite as much as the average reader can possi- 
bly achieve— a rate at which only 1,250 books could be read in 
half a century. Since this is so, he must be very thoughtless 
and very timid who feels any shame in confessing that he is 
wholly ignorant of a great many books; and on the other hand, 
none but a very superficial and conceited reader will venture to 
express surprise at the deficiencies of others, when a little 
thought would make his own so clearly manifest. In Cowper's' 
words : 

* Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much ; 

Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.' " * 

The manner in which we have gone after the strange gods of 
growth by accretion, rather than by digestion and assimilation, 
is well characterized by Rev. E. E. Hale. He says: u It is 
largely the fault of the schoolmasters that the word c education ' 
has come to be considered synonymous with going to school. 
' Where was he educated ? ' means, ' What college or school did 
he attend V ' Is he an educated man ? ' means, ' Did he take a 
diploma at any college ? ' As long ago as Miss Edgeworth, she 
put in her protest against the habit which spoke of a young 
ladies' education as 'finished,' when the governess was dis- 
missed. 'I hope you will say that your education has just 
begun,' said the virtuous governess. But, in face of Miss 
Edgeworth and common sense, careless conversation still permits 
such misuse of the word 'education.' 

" What is much worse, is that an abuse of schooling has fol- 
lowed. Largely misled by the theory that education is ended 

* The Choice of Books, Richardson. 



SAUNTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 25 

when a boy or girl leaves school, trustees and committees pile 
in upon the schoolwork every form of instruction. Into this 
little boat the school are packed, first the children, to save 
them ; then milk and water and sugar enough to keep them 
alive ; then knives and nails and gimlets for them to use on 
their desert island ; then powder and dynamite, percussion-caps 
and bullets against their enemies ; then philosophies of ethics 
and politics and medicine and hydrostatics and hydron amies for 
their safety there ; then architecture, music, and all other fine 
arts ; and, just as the poor boat is sinking, a dozen professors of 
languages, with their ' Ollendorff's, ' are tumbled into it, for fear 
the babies shall not be able, after they are saved from ship- 
wreck, to talk with the Aborigines. Boy or girl at seventeen is 
expected to have made a competent acquaintance with all the 
matters which we have thus named. 

"To do this promptly enough the text-books are reduced to 
the humblest minimum of information. As in an Italian opera 
you would find the lowest reduction of the possible story of 
Lear, in a text-book for large circulation you would find the 
lowest dilution of the science involved. ' Botany in Eleven 
Weeks,' is the name of one such book. * Chemistry in Eleven 
Weeks ' is another. At this rate, between nine years of age 
and seventeen, a boy can ' learn ' thirty-two ' sciences ' at school, 
and need never study but one at a time ; and little good would 
all of them together do him. This form of folly has, perhaps, 
run its course. Let us hope so." 

Thoroughness, then, stands first ; quantity, second. Abra- 
ham Lincoln was a well-furnished man, yet it is said that the 
books at his command as a boy and young man were but three 
— the Bible, iEsop's Fables and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. 
But his acquaintance with these books was not that ordinarily 
seen to-day. He knew them through and through. Yet our 
larger privilege is no defense against a just charge of the super- 
ficial mental habit. Perhaps we have had few as great students 



26 SAUNTEKINGS IN BIOLOGY. 

as Theodore Parker. "The first time I ever visited Theodore 
Parker," says Dr. Holmes, " he was not quite thirty years old y 
and I own that his reputation as a scholar had not reached me . 
In looking around his library I saw upon his shelves the great 
series of quartos — which I knew by their title only, if at all — 
Brucker's Historia Critica Philosophy. ' You have hardly 
read that, I suppose,' I said, not thinking that any student, in 
these degenerate days, grappled with these megatherial monsters 
in primitive erudition . l Oh yes, I have, ' he answered very qui- 
etly ; and then I, who thought I was dealing with a modest 
young divine of the regulation pattern, took another look at the 
massive head of the young man, whom Mr. Wendell Phillips 
has lately spoken of as the ' Jupiter of the pulpit. ' " So much 
for the quantity of his reading . The quality of his study is 
well indicated by his own words : ' ' The books which help you 
most are those which make you think most. The hardest way 
of learning is by easy reading ; but a great book that comes 
from a great thinker, — it is a ship of thought, deep freighted 
with truth and with beauty. ' ' If we must think much to grasp the 
things presented in this chapter, things which belong at the 
very foundation of this subject of the hygiene of our reproduc- 
tive system, may they, as Mr. Parker suggests, help us the 
more and bring us the more delight. 

The interest and the difficulty which surround the study of 
the material universe are alike great. The first great division 
of the subject which we meet places simple matter, as existing 
in the form of minerals and all inorganic bodies, on the one side ;. 
on the other, matter that is joined with life, which includes all 
organized beings, our knowledge concerning which goes to- 
make up the science of biology. Curiously enough we must at 
the outset acknowledge our inability to answer either question, 
What is matter? or What is life ? Brande remarks of the first 
that "Of the ultimate nature of matter the human faculties can- 
not take cognizance ; nor can data be furnished by observation 



SAUNTERLNGS IN BIOLOGY. 27 

or experiment on which to found an investigation of it. All we 
know of it is its sensible properties." Professor Bain can come 
at no better definition than this, that " Matter is a double-faced 
somewhat, physical on one side and spiritual on the other. ' * 
As to the second, no more striking proof of our ignorance of 
what really constitutes life is to be found than the laborious and 
roundabout efforts made to define it. " In seeking a definition 
of life, it is difficult to find one that does not include more than 
is necessary, or exclude something that should be taken in. 
Richerand's definition of life, that it is 'a collection of phe- 
nomena which succeed each other during a limited time in an 
organized body,' is equally applicable to the decay which goes 
on after death. According to De Blainville, ' life is the two- 
fold internal movement of composition and decomposition, at 
once general and continuous.' As Mr. Herbert Spencer in his 
' Principles of Biology' well observes, this conception is in 
some respects too narrow, and in other respects too wide. 
Thus, it excludes those nervous and muscular functions which 
form the most conspicuous and distinctive classes of vital phe- 
nomena, while it equally applies to the processes going on in a 
living body, and in a galvanic battery. Mr . Spencer proposed 
to define life as ' the co-ordination of actions, ' but, as he 
observes, 'like the others, this definition includes too much, 
for it may be said of the solar system, with its regularly recur- 
ing movements and its self-balancing perturbations, that it alsa 
exhibits co-ordination of actions.' His present and amended 
conception of life is : ' The definite combination of heterogene- 
ous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspond- 
ence with external co-existences and sequences. ' One of the 
latest definitions of life is that which has been suggested by 
Mr . G. H. Lewes ; ' Life is a series of definite and successive 
changes, both of structure and composition, which take place 
within an individual without destroying its identity.' This is 
perhaps as good a definition as has yet been given ; but no one- 



28 SAUNTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 

of those we have quoted is more than approximately true, and 
a perfect definition of life seems to be an impossibility. ' ' Huxley, 
in a carefully worded discourse containing the statement, with 
reasons therefor, that he is "no materialist, but, on the con- 
trary, believes materialism to involve grave philosophical error," 
is bold in his acknowledgment of our ignorance on these two 
fundamental points. He says : ' ' For, after all, what do we 
know of this terrible 'matter,' except as a name for the 
unknown and hypothetical cause of states of our own conscious- 
ness ? And what do we know of that ' spirit ' over whose 
threatened extinction by matter a great lamentation is arising, 
like that which was heard at the death of Pan, except that it is 
also a name for an unknown and hypothetical cause, or condi- 
tion, of states of consciousness ? In other words, matter and 
spirit are but names for the imaginary substrata of groups of nat- 
ural phenomena." And what are all these learned definitions 
of matter and life but scientific confessions of ignorance ? One is 
reminded of the old saw: "What is matter? Nevermind. 
What is mind ? No matter." 

With matter in its inorganic forms our present study is not 
concerned. But matter in its organized forms, matter wedded to 
life, the two great facts of the universe joined in their most inti- 
mate relationship, this is the Alpha and Omega of the science 
of reproduction. Science has ever been pushing its way down 
from the higher forms of animal life, where the methods of gen- 
eration are plainly parental, to the lower, where the methods of 
propagation are not so apparent. This investigation has given 
rise to the terms biogenesis and abiogenesis. Biogenesis is the 
origin of life by parentage, a branch of science of daily 
moment to each one of the great human family, at the same 
time well-nigh universally neglected. Abiogenesis is the term 
which has succeeded the older and less exact phrase, ' ' sponta- 
neous generation," and is destined to become as familar to our 
ears as its predecessor became some years ago. It is the 



SAUNTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 29 

name for the production of living by non-living matter — the 
birth of life from that which before had no life. We are to 
credit the term to Huxley, who, in an address in 1870, defined 
it, not by itself merely, but also in contradistinction to other 
allied terms, with which it is hardly necessary to encumber oar- 
selves at present. Of old the battle raged over the debatable 
ground of spontaneous generation; now we call it abiogenesis, 
but the ground and the battle remain essentially the same. It 
is fairly considered the most fundamental as well as the oldest 
of the questions raised by biology. And the ever-increasing 
urgency of physical inquiry has been felt to its full extent in 
this department. On the one hand stands medicine, anxious for 
definite information regarding its contagious diseases; on the 
other, evolution is impatient to have its probabilities changed 
into certainties. While over all, the great ultimatum of all sci- 
ence, the correlation of the physical forces, awaits a new con- 
firmation . At present the whole doctrine is in abeyance, and 
abiogenesis can neither be positively denied nor affirmed. It is 
well known that the ancient philosophies were very favorable to 
this theory. This baby elephant which we of this later day 
find on our hands, was a great pet of the ancient dignitaries in 
thought and investigation. In the seventeenth century it was 
but necessary to prove by a simple experiment that the maggot 
found in putrefying fiesh was not a spontaneous generation from 
that flesh's own decay, was not an instance in itself of abiogen- 
esis, to make the name of the talented Italian, Francesco Eedi, 
famous in this department. Ever since that time a constantly 
improving microscope, and a constantly rising standard of sci- 
entific experiment, have been driving the discussion from organ- 
ism to organism down the scale of being — from the minute to 
the still more minute, until one is fairly reminded of the 
Yankee's remark about the "leetle end o' nothin,' whittled 
down to a p'int." 

For the "promise and potency" of all inorganic matter is 



SO SAUNTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 

found in the atom; and the promise and potency of all 
organized matter, of all those forms of being which unite mat- 
ter and life, is found in the cell. And just so long as the two 
first questions in the catechism of science, What is matter? and 
What is life ? remain unanswered, just so long is it inevitable 
that we must go and keep going to the atom and the cell with 
our interrogatories. Those who oppose abiogenesis as being an 
untenable hypothesis, insist that all observations yet made 
which are worthy of credence, show living matter to be the off- 
spring of pre-existing living matter only ; that as we push our 
investigations farther and farther, the invariable result is to 
lessen the number of organisms which we cannot demonstrate to 
have arisen by parentage alone ; that such supposed cases 
have been shown again and again to arise from germs found float, 
ing in the atmosphere, and like unexpected and occult sources. 
As an illustration of the countless wonders of the microscopic 
world which this discussion has brought to light, I quote from 
Professor Huxley; "It is at present a well-established fact 
that certain diseases, both of plants and of animals, which have 
all the characteristics of contagious and infectious epidemics, 
are caused by minute organisms. The smut of wheat is a well- 
known instance of such a disease, and it cannot be doubted that 
the grape-disease and potato-disease fall under the same cate- 
gory. Among animals, insects are wonderfully liable to the 
ravages of contagious and infectious diseases caused by micro- 
scopic Fungi. In autumn, it is not uncommon to see flies, 
motionless upon a window-pane, with a sort of magic circle, in 
white, drawn around them. On microscopic examination, the 
magic circle is found to consist of innumerable spores, which 
have been thrown off in all directions by a minute fungus called 
Emjpusa Muscce, the spore-forming filaments of which stand out 
like a pile of velvet from the body of the fly. These spore- 
forming filaments are connected with others which fill the 
interior of the fly's body like so much fine wool, having eaten 



SAUNTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 31 

away and destroyed the creature's viscera. This is the full- 
grown condition of the Empusa. 

" If traced back to its earlier stages, in flies which are still 
active, and to all appearance healthy, it is found to exist in the 
form of minute corpuscles which float in the blood of the fly. 
These multiply and lengthen into filaments, at the expense of 
the fly's substance; and, when they have at last killed the 
patient, they grow out of its body and give off spores. Healthy 
flies shut up with diseased ones catch this mortal disease and 
perish like the others. A most competent observer, M. Cohn, 
who studied the development of the Empusa in the fly very 
carefully, was utterly unable to discover in what manner the 
smallest germs of the Empusa got into the fly . The spores 
could not be made to give rise to such germs by cultivation ; 
nor were such germs discoverable in the air, or in the food of 
the fly. It looked exceedingly like a case of abiogenesis, or, at 
any rate, of xenogenesis ; and it is only quite recently that the 
real course of events has been made out. It has been ascer- 
tained, that when one of these spores falls upon the body of a 
fly, it begins to germinate and sends out a process which bores 
its way through the fly's skin ; this, having reached the interior 
cavities of its body, gives off the minute floating corpuscles 
which are the earliest stage of the Empusa. The disease is 
1 contagious, ' because a healthy fly coming in contact with a dis- 
eased one, from which the spore-bearing filaments protrude, is 
pretty sure to carry off a spore or two. It is 'infectious,' 
because the spores become scattered about all sorts of matter 
in the neighborhood of the slain flies." 

Those who favor abiogenesis, while having to carry the incu- 
bus of all definite experiment so far made, which has given a 
uniform verdict in favor of biogenesis, and being obliged to 
resort to an ingenious and roundabout explaining away of these 
experiments, which shall put a construction upon them favor- 
able to the position which they hold, have, nevertheless, an 



SAUNTEBINGS IN BIOLOGY. 



immense weight of presumption on their side from the fact that 
it is a necessary and vital link in the chain of evolution, a doc- 
trine whose power and probability grow daily. This fact of 
necessity to evolution has given abiogenesis no less a champion 
than Haeckel. Again, it militates against the old idea of " vital 
force " as an entity ; an idea which has been an especially favor- 
ite one with physicians, but which is exceedingly distasteful to 
the modern scientist as a species. 

Once more, the establishment of the truth of abiogenesis 
would fortify the weakest spot in Darwinism and the " Origin of 
Species;" for natural selection would thereby be relieved from 
the onerous task of evolving all species from one, or at most 
a very limited number of original forms. Still, the lack 
of positive evidence in its favor is well shown in that a 
man of Huxley's standing puts himself on record as declaring 
that " of the causes which have led to the origination of living 
matter, then, it may be said that we know absolutely nothing." 5 
The summing up of the present status of the case may be com- 
prised within the words present failure and future possibilities. 
"But though I cannot express this conviction of mine too 
strongly, I must carefully guard myself against the supposition 
that I intend to suggest that no such thing as abiogenesis ever 
has taken place in the past, or ever will take place in the future. 
With organic chemistry, molecular physics, and physiology, 
yet in their infancy, and every day making prodigious strides, I 
think it would be the height of presumption for any man to say 
that the conditions under which matter assumes the properties 
we call ' vital' may not, some day, be artificially brought 
together. All I feel justified in afiirming is, that I see no rea- 
son for believing that the feat has been performed yet." * 

In connection with the study of the sciences of life, it is 
greatly interesting to note how the apparition of a conflict 
between science and religion, which has so alarmed very many 

* Huxley. 



SAUNTEEINGS IN BIOLOGY. 65 

good people, steadily retreats in a diminishing perspective, 
while the growth of fraternal feeling between theologian and 
scientist is constant and hearty. That one begins his study with 
the Creator and the other with the creation, is certainly cause for 
anything but antagonism. Both of them, if worthy the name 
of honest searchers after truth, come what may, have the one com- 
mon desire, — the establishing of that truth irrespective of pre- 
conceived opinions. Professor Tyndall says of inductive 
inquiry; "It requires patient industry, and an humble and con- 
scientious acceptance of what Nature reveals. The first condi- 
tion of success is an honest receptivity and a willingness to 
abandon all preconceived notions, however cherished, if they be 
found to contradict the truth. Believe me, a self-renunciation 
which has something noble in it, and of which the world never 
hears, is often enacted in the private experience of the true 
votary of science. ' ' A world of misunderstanding might have 
been avoided had we all adopted as our rule of debate, in that 
friction of mind upon mind to which we owe our best achieve- 
ments, the wise saying that we should offer, rather than contend 
for, our opinions. I am not certain that it is to Dr. Woolsey r 
ex-president of Yale College, we are indebted for the saying; 
but certain only that he is a most scholarly embodiment of the 
maxim. " True science and true religion," says Professor Hux- 
ley at the close of a course of lectures, ' ' are twin-sisters, and 
the separation of either from the other is sure to prove the 
death of both. Science prospers exactly in proportion as it is 
religious ; and religion flourishes in exact proportion to the sci- 
entific depth and firmness of its basis. The great deeds of 
philosophers have been less the fruit of their intellect than of 
the direction of that intellect by an eminently religious tone of 
mind. Truth has yielded herself rather to their patience, their 
love, their single-heartedness, and their self-denial, than to their 
logical acumen." 

(3) 



34 SAUNTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 

One cannot read the sermon of Bishop Simpson before 
the Methodist (Ecumenical Conference recently held in Lon- 
don, without a suggestion of these things lingering in the 
mind. Taking as his text, "The words that I speak unto you, 
they are spirit and they are life, ' ' he said, among other things : 
" The words of Christ are accompanied by an unseen spiritual 
power, which is indissolubly joined with them, and thus they 
become spirit and life. How the spiritual can be joined to the 
material we cannot explain. We cannot by experiment in sci- 
ence discover those hidden chains ; but we have analogies in 
Nature all around us. Where are the cords which bind this 
earth to yonder sun, or that hold the moon to this earth ? 
What is gravitation, that controls all the grosser elements? 
What is it the loadstone imparts by its mysterious touch to the 
needle, which makes it our safe guide through darkness and 
storm ? We can see results ; but we cannot look deeply into 
Nature. What is it that gives that minute seed power to 
expand and develop into the beautiful plant? You call it life. 
But what is that life ? The chemist has never found it. es. e 
anatomist has never detected it. I take a grain of wheat to my 
friend, the chemist, and he analyzes it. He tells me there is 
so much Carbon, Hydrogen, etc. I ask him to make me a grain 
of wheat, and he takes the various substances in their proper 
proportions and presents me the result. It looks like a grain 
of wheat, it has the same weight and form and color, and I 
cannot distinguish it from a grain which God has made . But 
plant it. It will not grow. But the grain which God has made, 
though kept in Egypt's catacombs for three thousand years, if 
given light and heat and moisture, will develop a stalk produc- 
ing its like. What is the difference % The one has life, the 
other has not. 

' ' So with the words of Christ. They are like other words . 
They sound, are spelled, and printed like other words ; but 
God has joined with them a spirit and life which affect the heart 



SAUNTERINOS IN BIOLOGY. 35 

of man. He gives to His own word an accompaniment of won- 
derful power. He is Himself present in His word and its only 
limit is His own grand design. 

" Certain classes of scientists love to descant upon the age of 
the world, and fancy that, by removing the period of creation 
millions of years back into eternity, they weaken our faith in a 
personal Creator and in His supervising care ; but they greatly 
mistake. No matter how many myriads of ages may have elapsed 
or through how many convulsions the world may have passed, 
the truth still stands. ' In the beginning God created the heav- 
en and the earth. ' More than this, He upholdeth ' all things 
bv the word of His power.' There must be a power present in 
the movement of all machinery ; there must be a living force 
guiding the movements of the universe. The act of creation 
though so sublime and glorious, is little more glorious than that 
of preserving and perpetuating. If from untold myriads of 
years this universe has existed, God's plans are older still ; and 
tb~ "'ability of Nature's laws but demonstrates that God is the 
sfc yesterday that He is to-day, and He will be the same for 
ever. What power is there in that word that upholdeth all 
things ! Could a jeweller produce a watch capable of keeping 
time for a hundred years, without erring a second, of what 
priceless value would it be, and how greatly we should admire 
the skill of the artist ! What shall we say, then, of Him who 
holds the machinery of unnumbered worlds for untold ages in 
perfect harmony? Nor has one atom ever been lost. Science 
shows us that forms perpetually change, but substances endure. 
Nothing perishes . In this sense it is true that not a jot or tittle 
of His Word shall ever fail. 

"Great as is the creation and preservation of worlds, there 
is something higher in life . The one is passive, the other act- 
ive. St. John says of Christ : ' In Him was life.' He was the 
author of life. He breathed into man a living soul. His Word 
perpetuates natural life, and how numberless are its forms and 



36 SAUNTEBINGS IN BIOLOGY. 

varieties ! Think of vegetable life in shrub and plant and tree, 
in the moss that covers the rock or tinges with red the snow. 
Think of animal life in all its species. It is said that 320,000 
species have been classified, and that probably the half have 
not been found. In what strange varieties and what singular 
forms does this life exist ! Life in the branches of moss. Life 
in the drop of water. Vegetable life below the surface of the 
earth, in unturned soil. Animal life in every layer or drop of 
the sea. In Summer heat the very dust of the earth seems 
alive, and the air is full of living beings . Life is in the micro- 
scopic insect, as well as in the elephant. It co-exists with 
almost every form of matter and in almost every temperature. 
The scientific world was startled the other day by the announce- 
ment that organized forms had been discovered in aerolites, 
and a distinguished savant suggested that possibly life might in 
this way have first reached our earth from more advanced 
worlds. Without discussing the probability of this fancy, if it 
were true that life could come in the midst of a glowing 
mass of incandescent matter, under what fearful surroundings 
might it exist. 

' ' What endless gradations in the character of that life, from 
the worm, that riots and multiplies in corruption, to man, who 
bears the image of God and is his vice-general on earth — from 
life for a moment to life everlasting. God's great lesson seems 
to be that life, though working through form, is independent of 
form ; that life is as truly in the insect, whose shadowy form is 
scarcely visible in the microscope, as in the great whale, that 
makes the ocean boil." 

And not only is there this unity of life through all its diversi- 
ties, but unity of matter as well. Everywhere we find matter 
and life inseparably linked together. The bond of unity run- 
ning through all life we readily perceive. The bond of unity 
running through the matter bound up with that life we do not 
as easily see. Yet there is a fundamental living substance, a 



SAtJOTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 37 

" physical basis of life," to which modern science has given the 
name of protoplasm. Protoplasm ; that word which so well 
serves to point out the condition of things brought about by the 
multiplication of the means of obtaining information . What 
careless mental habits we all indulge. For all of us, those 
even who are the most casual students and the most casual 
readers, would be ashamed to be ignorant of the term. We are 
■all familiar with it ; yet I am inclined to think that if anyone 
■should ask us what we understood by it, we should be com- 
pelled to confess our notions regarding it to be exceedingly 
vauge. I have such a hearty regard for the vigorous and per- 
spicuous English of which that giant in this department, Pro- 
fessor Huxley, makes use, as well as for his scientific attain- 
ments, that I shall ask you to pardon me in letting him alone 
speak to us on this topic. Indeed I am sure you would not 
pardon me did I do otherwise, and shall be content to quote 
extensively from him . 

"In order to make the title of this discourse generally intelli- 
gible, I have translated the term ' Protoplasm, ' which is the sci- 
entific name of the substance of which I am about to speak by 
the words, 'the physical basis of life.' I suppose that, to 
many, the idea that there is such a thing as a physical basis, or 
matter, of life may be novel — so widely spread is the concep- 
tion of life as a something which works through matter, but is 
independent of it; and even those who are aware that matter 
and life are inseparably connected, may not be prepared for the 
conclusion plainly suggested by the phrase, c the physical basis 
or matter of life,' that the^e is some one kind of matter which is 
common to all living beings, and that their endless diversities 
are bound together by a physical, as well as an ideal, unity. In 
fact, when first apprehended, such a doctrine as this appears 
almost shocking to common sense. 

" What, truly, can seem to be more obviously different from 
one another, in faculty, in form, and in substance, than the 



38 SAUNTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 

various kinds of living beings ? What community of faculty 
can there be between the brightly-colored lichen, which so 
nearly resembles a mere mineral incrustation of the bare rock 
on which it grows, and the painter, to whom it is instinct with 
beauty, or the botanist, whom it feeds with knowledge % 

"Again, think of the microscopic fungus — a mere infinitesi- 
mal ovoid particle, which finds space and duration enough to 
multiply into countless millions in the body of a living fly ; and 
then of the wealth of foliage, the luxuriance of flower and 
fruit, which lies between this bald sketch of a plant and the 
giant pine of California, towering to the dimensions of a cathe- 
dral spire, or the Indian fig, which covers acres with its pro- 
found shadow, and endures while nations and empires come and 
go around its vast circumference. Or, turning to the other half 
of the world of life, picture to yourselves the great Finner whale, 
hugest of beasts that live, or have lived, disporting his eighty 
or ninety feet of bone, muscle, and blubber, with easy roll, 
among waves in which the stoutest ship that ever left dockyard 
would founder hopelessly ; and contrast him with the invisible 
animalcules — mere gelatinous specks, multitudes of which could, 
in fact, dance upon the point of a needle with the same ease as 
the angels of the Schoolmen could, in imagination. With these 
images before your minds, you may well ask, what community 
of form, or structure, is there between the animalcule and the 
whale ; or between the fungus and the fig-tree? And, afortiori f 
between all four ? 

" Finally, if we regard substance, or material composition, 
what hidden bond can connect the flower which a girl wears in 
her hair and the blood which courses through her youthful 
veins ; or, what is there in common between the dense and 
resisting mass of the oak, or the strong fabric of the toirtoise, 
and those broad discs of glassy jelly which may be seen pulsat- 
ing through the waters of a calm sea, but which drain away to 
mere films in the hand which raises them out of their element ? 



SAUNTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 39 

" Such objections as these must, I think, arise in the mind of 
every one who ponders, for the first time, upon the conception 
of a single physical basis of life underlying all the diversities of 
vital existence ; but I propose to demonstrate to you that, not- 
withstanding these apparent difficulties, a threefold unity — 
namely, a unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a 
unity of substantial composition — does pervade the whole liv- 
ing world. 

"No very abstruse argumentation is needed, in the first 
place, to prove that the powers, or faculties, of all kinds of liv- 
ing matter, diverse as they may be in degree, are substantially 
similar in kind. 

" Goethe has condensed a survey of all the powers of man- 
kind into the well known epigram : — 

' Warum treibt sich das Volk so und schreit ? Es will sich ernahren 
Kinder zengen, und die nahren so gut es vermag. 
********* 

"Weiter bringt es Kein Mensch, still er sich wie er auch will/ 
"In physiological language this means, that all the multi- 
farious and complicated activities of man are comprehensible 
under three catagories. Either they are immediately directed 
towards the maintenance and development of the body, or they 
effect transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the 
body, or they tend towards the continuance of the species. Even 
those manifestations of intellect, of feeling, and of will, which 
we rightly name the higher faculties, are not excluded from 
this classification, inasmuch as to every one but the subject of 
them, they are known only as transitory changes in the relative 
positions of parts of the body. Speech, gesture, and every 
other form of human action are, in the long run, resolvable into 
muscular contraction, and muscular contraction is but a trans- 
itory change in the relative positions of the parts of a muscle. 
But the scheme which is large enough to embrace the activities 
of the highest form of life, covers all those of the lower crea- 



40 SAUNTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 

tures. The lowest plant, or animalcule, feeds, grows, and 
reproduces its kind. In addition, all animals manifest those 
transitory changes of form which we class under irritability and 
contractility ; and, it is more than probable, that when the veget- 
able world is thoroughly explored, we shall find all plants in 
possession of the same powers, at one time or other of their 
existence. 

" I am not now alluding to such phenomena, at once rare and 
conspicuous, as those exhibited by the leaflets of the sensitive 
plant, or the stamens of the barberry, but to much more widely- 
spread, and, at the same time, more subtle and hidden, mani- 
festations of vegetable contractility. You are doubtless aware 
that the common nettle owes its stinging property to the innum- 
erable stiff and needle-like, though exquisitely delicate, hairs 
which cover its surface. Each stinging-needle tapers from a 
broad base to a slender summit, which, though rounded at the 
end, is of such microscopic fineness that it readily penetrates, 
and breaks off in, the skin. The whole hair consists of a very 
delicate outer case of wood, closely applied to the inner surface 
of which is a layer of semi-fluid matter, full of innumerable 
granules of extreme minuteness. This semi-fluid lining is pro- 
toplasm, which thus constitutes a kind of bag, full of a limpid 
liquid, and roughly corresponding in form with the interior of 
the hair which it fills. When viewed with a sufficiently high 
magnifying power, the protoplasmic layer of the nettle hair is 
seen to be in a condition of unceasing activity. Local contrac- 
tions of the whole thickness of its substance pass slowly and 
gradually from point to point, and give rise to the appearance 
of progressive waves, just as the bending of successive stalks 
of corn by a breeze produces the apparent billows of a corn- 
field. 

" But, in addition to these movements, and independently of 
them, the granules are driven, in relatively rapid streams, 
through channels in the protoplasm which seem to have a con- 



SAtTNTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 41 

-siderable amount of persistance. Most commonly, the cur- 
rents in adjacent parts of the protoplasm take similar direc- 
tions ; and, thus, there is a general stream up one side of the 
hair and down the other. But this does not prevent the 
existence of partial currents which take different routes ; and, 
sometimes, trains of granules may be seen coursing swiftly in 
opposite directions, within a twenty-thousandth of an inch of 
one another ; while, occasionally, opposite streams come into 
direct collision, and, after a longer or shorter struggle, one 
predominates. The cause of these currents seems to lie in con- 
tractions of the protoplasm which bounds the channels in 
which they flow, but which are so minute that the best micro- 
scopes show only their effects, and not themselves. 

" The spectacle afforded by the wonderful energies prisoned 
within the compass of the microscopic hair of a plant, which 
we commonly regard as a merely passive organism, is not easily 
forgotten by one who has watched its display, continued hour 
after hour, without pause or sign of weakening. The possible 
complexity of many other organic forms, seemingly as simple 
as the protoplasm of the nettle, dawns upon one ; and the com- 
parison of such a protoplasm to a body with an internal circula- 
tion, which has been put forward by an eminent physiologist, 
loses much of its startling character. Currents similar to those 
of the hairs of the nettle have been observed in a great multi- 
tude of very different plants, and weighty authorities have sug- 
gested that they probably occur, in more or less perfection, in 
all young vegetable cells. If such be the case, the wonderful 
noonday silence of a tropical forest is, after all, due only to the 
dulness of our hearing ; and could our ears catch the murmur 
of these tiny maelstroms, as they whirl in the innumerable 
myriads of living cells which constitute each tree, we should be 
stunned, as with the roar of a great city. 

"Among the lower plants, it is the rule rather than the 
exception, that contractility should be still more openly mani- 



42 SATJNTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 

fested at some period of their existence. The protoplasm of 
Algce and Fungi becomes, under many circumstances, par- 
tially, or completely, freed from its woody case, and exhibits 
movements of its whole mass, or is propelled by the contrac- 
tility of one, or more, hair-like prolongations of its body, which 
are called vibratile cilia. And, so far as the conditions of the 
manifestations of the phenomena of contractility have yet been 
studied, they are the same for the plant as for the animal. 
Heat and electric shocks influence both, and in the same way, 
though it may be in different degrees. It is by no means my 
intention to suggest that there is no difference in faculty 
between the lowest plant and the highest, or between plants 
and animals. But the difference between the powers of the 
lowest plant, or animal, and those of the highest, is one of degree, 
not of kind, and depends, as Milne-Edwards long ago so well 
pointed out, upon the extent to which the principle of the 
division of labor is carried out in the living economy. In the 
lowest organism all parts are competent to perform all functions, 
and one and the same portion of protoplasm may successively 
take on the function of feeding, moving, or reproducing 
apparatus. In the highest, on the contrary, a great number of 
parts combine to perform each function, each part doing its 
alloted share of the work with great accuracy and efficiency, 
but being useless for any other purpose. 

"On the other hand, notwithstanding all the fundamental 
resemblances which exist between the powers of the protoplasm 
in plants and in animals, they present a striking difference (to 
which I shall advert more at length presently), in the fact that 
plants can manufacture fresh protoplasm out of mineral com- 
pounds, whereas animals are obliged to procure it ready-made, 
and hence, in the long run, depend upon plants . Upon what 
condition this difference in the powers of the two great divis- 
ions of the world of life depends, nothing is at present known. 

" With such qualification as arises out of the last-mentioned 



SAUNTERING-S IN BIOLOGY. 45 

fact, it may be truly said that the acts of all living things are 
fundamentally one. Is any such unity predicable of their 
forms? Let us seek in easily verified facts for a reply to this 
question. If a drop of blood be drawn by pricking one's fin- 
ger, and viewed with proper precautions and under a sufficiently 
high microscopic power, there will be seen, among the innumer- 
able multitude of little, circular, discoidal bodies, or corpuscles^ 
which fioat in it and give it its color, a comparatively small 
number of colorless corpuscles, of somewhat larger size and 
very irregular shape. If the drop of blood be kept at the tem- 
perature of the body, these colorless corpuscles will be seen to 
exhibit marvellous activity, changing their forms with great 
rapidity, drawing in and thrusting out prolongations of their 
substance, and creeping about as if they were independent 
organisms. 

" The substance which is thus active is a mass of protoplasm, 
and its activity differs in detail, rather than in principle, from 
that of the protoplasm of the nettle. Under sundry circum- 
stances the corpuscle dies and becomes distended into a round 
mass, in the m-'dst of which is seen a smaller spherical body, 
which existed, but was more or less hidden, in the living cor- 
puscle, and is called its nucleus. Corpuscles of essentially sim- 
ilar structure are to be found in the skin, in the lining of the 
mouth, and scattered through the whole framework of the body. 
Hay, more ; in the earliest condition of the human organism, in 
that state in which it has but just become distinguishable from the 
egg in which it arises, it is nothing but an aggregation of such 
corpuscles, and every organ of the body was, once, no more than 
such an aggregation. 

" Thus a nucleated mass of protoplasm turns out to be what 
may be termed the structural unit of the human body. As a 
matter of fact, the body, in its earliest state, is a mere multiple 
of such units ; and, in its perfect condition, it is a multiple of such 
units, variously modified. 



44 SAUNTEKINGS. IN BIOLOGY. 

" But does the formula which expresses the essential structural 
character of the highest animal cover all the rest, as the state- 
ment of its powers and faculties covered that of all others ? 
Very nearly. Beast and fowl, reptile and fish, mollusk, worm 
and polype, are all composed of structural units of the same 
character, namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus. There 
are sundry very low animals, each of which, structurally, is a 
mere colorless blood-corpuscle, leading an independent life. But 
at the very bottom of the animal scale, even this simplicity be- 
comes simplified, and all the phenomena of life are manifested 
by a particle of protoplasm without a nucleus . Nor are such 
organisms insignificant by reason of their want of complexity. 
It is a fair question whether the protoplasm of those simplest 
forms of life, which people an immense extent of the bottom of 
the sea, would not outweigh that of all the higher living beings 
which inhabit the land put together . And in ancient times, no 
less than at the present day, such living beings as these have 
been the greatest of rock builders. 

' ' What has been said of the animal world is no less true of 
plants. Imbedded in the protoplasm at the broad, or attached 
end of the nettle hair, there lies a spheroidal nucleus. Careful 
examination further proves that the whole substance of the nettle 
is made up of a repetition of such masses of nucleated protoplasm, 
each contained in a wooden case, which is modified in form, 
sometimes into a woody fibre, sometimes into a duct or spiral 
vessel, sometimes into a pollen grain, or an ovule. Traced 
back to its earliest state, the nettle arises as the man does, in a 
particle of nucleated protoplasm. And in the lowest plants, as 
in the lowest animals, a single mass of such protoplasm may 
constitute the whole plant, or the protoplasm may exist without 
a nucleus. 

" Under these circumstances it may well be asked, how is one 
mass of non-nucleated protoplasm to be distinguished from 
another ? why call one ' plant ' and the other ' animal '? 



SAUNTERLNGS IN BIOLOGY. 45 

' ' The only reply is that, so far as form is concerned, plants 
and animals are not separable, and that, in many cases, it is a 
mere matter of convention whether we call a given organism an 
animal or a plant. There is living body called ^Ethalium Sep- 
ticum, which appears upon decaying vegetable substances, and, 
in one of its forms, is common upon the surfaces of tan- pits. In 
this condition it is, to all intents and purposes, a fungus, and 
formerly was always regarded as such ; but the remarkable inves- 
tigations of De Bary have shown that, in another condition, the 
JEthalium is an actively locomotive creature, and takes in solid 
matters, upon which, apparently, it feeds, thus exhibiting the 
most characteristic feature of animality. Is this a plant ; or is 
it an animal ? Is it both ; or is it neither ? Some decide in favor 
of the last supposition, and establish an intermediate kingdom, 
a sort of biological no man's land for all these questionable 
forms. But, as it is admittedly impossible to draw any distinct 
boundary line between this no man's land and the vegetable 
world on the one hand, or the animal, on the other, it appears to 
me that this proceeding merely doubles the difficulty which, 
before, was single. 

' ' Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all 
life. It is the clay of the potter : which, bake it and paint it 
as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, 
from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod. 

" Thus it becomes clear that all living powers are cognate, and 
that all living forms are fundamentally of one character. The 
researches of the chemist have revealed a no less striking uni- 
formity of material composition in living matter. 

"In perfect strictness, it is true that chemical investigation 
can tell us little or nothing, directly, of the composition of liv- 
ing matter, inasmuch as such matter must needs die in the 
act of analysis, — and upon this very obvious ground, objec- 
tions, which I confess seem to me to be somewhat frivolous, 
have been raised to the drawing of any conclusions whatever 



46 SAUNTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 

respecting the composition of actually living matter, from that 
of the dead matter of life, which alone is accessible to us. But 
objectors of this class do not seem to reflect that it is also, in 
strictness, true that we know nothing about the composition of 
any body whatever, as it is. The statement that a crystal of 
calc-spar consists of carbonate of lime, is quite true, if we only 
mean that, by appropriate processes, it may be resolved into 
carbonic acid and quicklime. If you pass the same carbonic 
acid over the very quicklime thus obtained, you will obtain car- 
bonate of lime again ; but it will not be calc-spar, nor anything 
like it. Can it, therefore, be said that chemical analysis teaches 
nothing about the chemical composition of calc-spar ? Such a 
statement would be absurd ; but it is hardly more so than the 
talk one occasionally hears about the uselessness of applying 
the results of chemical analysis to the living bodies which have 
yielded them. 

u One fact, at any rate, is out of reach of such refinements, 
and this is, that all the forms of protoplasm which have yet 
been examined contain the four elements, carbon, hydrogen, 
oxygen and nitrogen, in very complex union, and that they 
behave similarly towards several re-agents. To this complex 
combination, the nature of which has never been determined 
with exactness, the name of Protein has been applied. And 
if we use this term with such caution as may properly arise out 
of our comparative ignorance of the things for which it stands, 
it may be truly said, that all protoplasm is proteinaceous, or, 
as the white, or albumen, of an egg is one of the commonest 
examples of a nearly pure protein matter, we may say that all 
living matter is more or less Albuminoid. 

" Perhaps it would not yet be safe to say that all forms of 
protoplasm are affected by the direct action of electric shocks ; 
and yet the number of cases in which the contraction of proto- 
plasm is shown to be affected by this agency, increases every 
day. 



SAUNTEEINGS IN BIOLOGY. 47 

u Nor can it be affirmed with perfect confidence, that all 
forms of protoplasm are liable to undergo that peculiar coagu- 
lation at a temperature of 40° — 50° centigrade, which has been 
called 'heat-stiffening,' though Kuhne's beautiful researches 
have proved this occurence to take place in so many and such 
diverse living beings, that it is hardly rash to expect that the 
law holds good for all. 

' ' Enough has, perhaps, been said to prove the existence of a 
general uniformity in the character of the protoplasm, or phys- 
ical basis, of life, in whatever group of living beings it may 
be studied. But it will be understood that this general uniform- 
ity by no means excludes any amount of special modifications 
of the fundamental substance. The mineral, carbonate of lime, 
assumes an immense diversity of characters, though no one 
doubts that, under all these Protean changes, it is one and the 
same thing. 

u And now, what is the ultimate fate, and what the origin, of 
the matter of life? 

u Is it, as some of the older naturalists supposed, diffused 
throughout the universe in molecules, which are indestructible 
and unchangeable in themselves ; but, in endless transmigration, 
unite in innumerable permutations, into the diversified forms of 
life we know ? Or, is the matter of life composed of ordinary 
matter, differing from it only in the manner in which its atoms 
are aggregated? Is it built up of ordinary matter, and again 
resolved into ordinary matter when its work is done ? 

" Modern science does not hesitate a moment between these 
alternatives. Physiology writes over the portals of life — 

'Debemur Morti nos nostraque/ 

^with a profounder meaning than the Roman poet attached to 
that melancholy line. Under whatever disguise it takes refuge, 
whether fungus or oak, worm or man, the living protoplasm not 
only ultimately dies and is resolved into its mineral and lifeless 



48 SAUNTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 

constituents, but is always dying, and, strange as the paradox 
may sound, could not live unless it died. 

u In the wonderful story of the ' Peau de Chagrin,' the hero 
becomes possessed of a magical wild ass' skin, which yields him 
the means of gratifying all his wishes. But its surface repre- 
sents the duration of the proprietor's life ; and for every satisfied 
desire the skin shrinks in proportion to the intensity of fruition,, 
until at length life and the last hand-breadth of the peau de cha- 
grin disappear with the gratification of a last wish. 

" Balzac's studies had led him over a wide range of thought 
and speculation, and his shadowing forth of physiological truth 
in this strange story may have been intentional. At any rate, 
the matter of life is a veritable peau de chagrin, and for every 
vital act it is somewhat the smaller. All work implies waste, 
and the work of life results, directly or indirectly, in the waste 
of protoplasm. 

" Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some physical 
loss ; and, in the strictest sense, he burns that others may have 
light — so much eloquence, so much of his body resolved into 
carbonic acid, water, and urea. It is clear that this process of 
expenditure cannot go on forever. But, happily, the proto- 
plasmic peau de chagrin differs from Balzac's in its capacity 
of being repaired, and brought back to its full size, after every 
exertion. 

" For example, this present lecture, whatever its intellectual 
worth to you, has a certain physical value to me, which is, con- 
ceivably, expressible by the number of grains of protoplasm 
and other bodily substance wasted in maintaining my vital pro- 
cesses during its delivery. My peau de chagrin will be dis- 
tinctly smaller at the end of the discourse than it was at the 
beginning. By and by, I shall probably have recourse to the 
substance commonly called mutton, for the purpose of stretch- 
ing it back to its original size. Now this mutton was once the 
living protoplasm, more or less modified, of another animal — 



SAUNTERING-S IN BIOLOGY. 49 

a sheep. As I shall eat it, it is the same matter altered, not 
only by death, but by exposure to sundry artificial operations in 
the process of cooking. 

' c But these changes, whatever be their extent, have not ren- 
dered it incompetent to resume its old functions as matter of 
life . A singular inward labratory, which I possess, will dis- 
solve a certain portion of the modified protoplasm ; the solution 
so formed will pass into my veins ; and the subtle influences to 
which it will then be subjected will convert the dead protoplasm 
into living protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into man. 

"Nor is this all. If digestion were a thing to be trifled 
with, I might sup upon lobster, and the matter of life of the 
crustacean would undergo the same wonderful metamorphosis 
into humanity. And were I to return to my own place by sea, 
and undergo shipwreck, the Crustacea might, and probably would, 
return the compliment, and demonstrate our common nature by 
turning my protoplasm into living lobster. Or, if nothing bet- 
ter were to be had, I might supply my wants with mere bread, 
and I should find the protoplasm of the wheat-plant to be con- 
vertible into man, with no more trouble than that of the sheep, 
and with far less, I fancy, than that of the lobster. 

"Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment what 
animal, or what plant, I lay under contribution for protoplasm, 
and the fact speaks volumes for the general identity of that 
substance in all living beings. I share this catholicity of assim- 
ilation with other animals, all of which, so far as we know, 
could thrive equally well on the protoplasm of any of their fel- 
lows, or of any plant ; but here the assimilative powers of the 
animal world cease. A solution of smelling-salts in water, 
with an infinitesimal proportion of some other saline matters, 
contains all the elementary bodies which enter into the composi- 
tion of protoplasm ; but, as I need hardly say, a hogshead of 
that fluid would not keep a hungry man from starving, nor 



50 SAUNTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 

would it save any animal whatever from a like fate. An ani- 
mal cannot make protoplasm, but must take it ready-made from 
some other animal, or some plant — the animal's highest feat of 
constructive chemistry being to convert dead protoplasm into 
that living matter of life which is appropriate to itself. 

4 1 Therefore, in seeking for the origin of protoplasm we must 
eventually turn to the vegetable world. The fluid containing 
carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, which offers such a Bar- 
mecide feast to the animal, is a table richly spread to multi- 
tudes of plants ; and, with a due supply of only such materials, 
many a plant will not only maintain itself in vigor, but grow 
and multiply until it has increased a million-fold, or a million 
million-fold, the quantity of protoplasm which it originally pos- 
sessed ; in this way building up the matter of life, to an indef- 
inite extent, from the common matter of the universe. 

"Thus, the animal can only raise the complex substance of 
dead protoplasm to the higher power, as one may say, of living 
protoplasm ; while the plant can raise the less complex sub- 
stances — carbonic acid, water, and ammonia — to the same 
stage of living protoplasm, if not to the same level. But the 
plant also has its limitations. Some of the fungi, for example, 
appear to need higher compounds to start with ; and no known 
plant can live upon the uncompounded elements of protoplasm. 
A plant supplied with pure carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and 
nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur, and the like, would as infal- 
libly die as the animal in his bath of smelling-salts, though it 
would be surrounded by all the constituents of protoplasm. 
Nor, indeed, need the process of simplification of vegetable 
food be carried so far as this, in order to arrive at the limit of 
the plant's thaumaturgy. Let water, carbonic acid, and all 
the other needful constituents be supplied with ammonia, and 
an ordinary plant will still be unable to manufacture protoplasm. 

" Thus the matter of life, so far as, we know it (and we have 
no right to speculate on any other), breaks up, in consequence 



SAUNTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 51 

of that continual death which is the condition of its manifesting 
vitality, into carbonic acid, water, and ammonia, which certainly 
possess no properties but those of ordinary matter. And out 
of these same forms of ordinary matter, and from none which 
are simpler, the vegetable world builds up all the protoplasm 
which keeps the animal world a-going. Plants are the accumu- 
lators of the power which animals distribute and disperse. 

"But it will be observed, that the existence of the matter of 
life depends on the pre-existence of certain compounds ; namely, 
carbonic acid, water, and ammonia. Withdraw any one of these 
three from the world, and all vital phenomena come to an end. 
They are related to the protoplasm of the plant, as the proto- 
plasm of the plant is to that of the animal. Carbon, hydrogen, 
oxygen, and nitrogen are all lifeless bodies. Of these, carbon 
and oxygen unite, in certain proportions and under certain con- 
ditions, to give rise to carbonic acid ; hydrogen and oxygen pro- 
duce water ; nitrogen and hydrogen give rise to ammonia. These 
new compounds, like the elementary bodies of which they are 
composed, are lifeless. But when they are brought together, 
under certain conditions they give rise to the still more complex 
body, protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena 
of life. 

"I see no break in this series of steps in molecular complica- 
tion, and I am unable to understand why the language which is 
applicable to any one term of the series may not be used to any 
of the others. We think fit to call different kinds of matter car- 
bon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, and to speak of the various 
powers and activities of these substances as the properties of the 
matter of which they are composed. 

" When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain propor- 
tion, and an electric spark is passed through them, they disap- 
pear, and a quantity of water, equal in weight to the sum of 
their weights, appears in their place. There is not the slightest 
parity between the passive and active powers of the water and 



52 SAUNTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 

those of the oxygen and hydrogen which have given rise to it. 
At 32° Fahrenheit, and far below that temperature, oxygen 
and hydrogen are elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles tend 
to rush away from one another with great force. Water, at the 
same temperature, is a strong though brittle solid, whose par- 
ticles tend to cohere into definite geometrical shapes, and some* 
times build up frosty imitations of the most complex forms of 
vegetable foliage. 

u Nevertheless we call these, and many strange phenomena, 
the properties of the water, and we do not hesitate to believe 
that, in some way or another, they result from the properties 
of the component elements of the water. We do not assume 
that a something called ' aquosity ' entered into and took pos- 
session of the oxide of hydrogen as soon as it was formed, and 
then guided the aqueous particles to their places in the facets of 
the crystal, or amongst the leaflets of the hoar-frost. On the 
contrary we live in the hope and in the faith that, by the 
advance of molecular physics, we shall by and by be able to see 
our way as clearly from the constituents of water to the prop- 
erties of water, as we are now able to deduce the operations of 
a watch from the form of its parts and the manner in which 
they are put together. 

"Is the case in any way changed when carbonic acid, water, 
and ammonia disappear, and in their place, under the influence of 
pre-existing living protoplasm, an equivalent weight of the mat- 
ter of life makes its appearance ? 

" It is true that there is no sort of parity between the prop- 
erties of the components and the properties of the resultant, but 
neither was there in the case of the water. It is also true that 
what I have spoken of as the influence of pre-existing living 
matter is something quite unintelligible ; but does anybody quite 
comprehend the modus operandi of an electric spark, which 
traverses a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen % 

" What justification is there, then, for the assumption of the 



SAUNTEKINGS IN BIOLOGY. 53 

■existence in the living matter of a something which has no rep- 
resentative, or correlative, in the not living matter which gave 
rise to it ? What better philosophical status has i vitality ' than 
4 aquosity ? ' And why should { vitality ' hope for a better fate 
than the other 'itys' which have disappeared since Martinus 
Scriblerus accounted for the operation of the meat-jack by its 
inherent ' meat-roasting quality, ' and scorned the ' materialism ' 
of those who explained the turning of the spit by a certain 
mechanism worked by the draught of the chimney ? 

" If scientific language is to possess a definite and constant 
signification whenever it is employed, it seems to me that we are 
logically bound to apply to the protoplasm, or physical basis of 
life, the same conceptions as those which are held to be legiti- 
mate elsewhere. If the phenomena exhibited by water are its 
properties, so are those presented by protoplasm, living or 
dead, its properties." * 

Per contra, the noted French scientist, Quatrefages, from the 
other side of the English Channel, remarks ; " I have repeatedly, 
and for many years, maintained the doctrine which I have summed 
up here. It seems to me confirmed in the highest degree by the 
researches undertaken for the elucidation of the problem of 
which we are treating. The experiences of M. Bernard, in par- 
ticular, relative to the action exercised by anaesthetics upon 
plants as well as upon animals, makes it impossible for us to 
doubt for a moment the intervention of an agent distinct from 
physico-chemical forces in organic beings. In employing the 
word Life to designate this agent, I only make use of an estab- 
lished expression^ without pretending to go beyond the informa- 
tion gained from experiment and scientific observation." f 

However, I must beg you not to misapprehend Huxley's 
position. It is easy to misunderstand a fragment. Of the 
whole he himself says, ' ' The Essay * On the Physical Basis of 
Life ' was intended to contain a plain and untechnical statement 

* On the Physical Basis of Life. fThe Human Species. 



54: SAUNTERINGS IN BIOLOGY. 

of one of the great tendencies of modern biological thought y 
accompanied by a protest, from the philosophical side, against 
what is commonly called Materialism. The result of my well- 
meant efforts I find to be, that I am generally credited with 
having invented ' protoplasm ' in the interests of ' material- 
ism.'" Again: "This union of materialistic terminology 
with the repudiation of materialistic philosophy I share with 
some of the most thoughtful men with whom I am acquainted." 
Passing now from the origin of living matter to its functions, 
that is, the actions of which it is capable, we find that they may 
all be included in three classes. First, the nutritive, second, 
the reproductive, and third, the motive. The nutritive func" 
tions form the class concerning which we are, perhaps, best 
informed. The popular works on the maintenance of healthy 
the sanitary articles 'in our newspapers, and the physiology 
taught in our schools devote so large a proportion of their 
attention to this class of functions, that the public is familiar 
with its workings to a very gratifying extent; — gratifying in 
spite of the somewhat phenominal variance between its knowl- 
edge and its practice in this direction. It is to the exercise of 
this function that we owe the preservation of the balance 
between the processes of waste on the one side, and those of 
repair on the other. The difference existing just at this point 
between the inorganic and organic worlds, is well put by Quat- 
refages. u A crystal, as M. Naudin has well remarked, closely 
resembles one of those regular piles of shot which may be seen 
in every arsenal . It only increases from the exterior, as the 
pile is increased when the soldier adds a fresh layer of shot ; 
its molecules are just as immovable as the balls of iron. It is 
exactly the contrary with the organized being, and the simpler 
its composition the greater the contrast. The small size of the 
moneron and the amoeba prevents, it is true, certain observa- 
tions. I appeal, however, to all those naturalists who have 
studied certain marine sponges in a living state. They must 



SAUNTEKINGS IN BIOLOGY. 55 

like myself have remarked the strange activity of the vital 
whirlpool in the semi-sarcodic substance which surrounds their 
siliceous or horny skeleton ; they will have seen the sea water 
in which they are placed move with a rapidity which it never 
exhibits when in contact with any other animal. 

4 ' The reason is that, in the organized being, the repose of the 
crystal is replaced by an incessant movement ; that, instead of 
remaining immovable and unalterable, the molecules are unceas- 
ingly undergoing transformation, changing their composition, 
producing fresh substances, retaining some and rejecting others. 
Far from resembling a pile of shot, the organized being may 
much rather be compared to the combination of a number of 
physico-chemical apparatus, constantly in action to burn or re- 
duce materials borrowed from without, and ever making use of 
their own substance for its incessant renewal. 

u In other words, in the crystal once formed the forces remain 
in a state of stable equilibium, which is only interrupted by the 
influence of exterior causes. Hence the possibility of its indef- 
inite continuance without any change either of its forms or of its 
properties. In the organized being the equilibrium is unstably 
or rather, there is no equilibrium properly so called. Every 
moment the organized being expends as much/ore* as matter, 
and owes its continuance solely to the balance of the gain and loss. 
Hence the possibility of a modification of its properties and form 
without its ceasing to exist.' ' 

Of the third class of functions, with its interesting studies of 
the temporary changes of form, modifying the relations of part 
to part, and of the entire organism to surrounding substances ; 
of its special tissues of muscle and nerve and special sense, we 
cannot stop to speak. The second class, the reproductive, em- 
braces the special object of our present research. But before 
entering upon the consideration of the subject as applied to man 
solely, it is appropriate that we turn our attention for a few 
moments to generation in its broader aspects. Lest this chapter 



56 SAUNTERINOS IN BIOLOGY. 

become swollen to undue proportions, we will reserve this depart- 
ment of the subject in hand for the succeeding chapter ; only 
remarking, while we have freshly in mind this trinity of function, 
that this trinity is well worthy a place in one's memory ; and 
that as apt and accurate a phrasing as its members have received, 
is respectively, the sustentative, the generative, the correlative. 



CHAPTER III 



REPBODUCTION. 

From time immemorial no more constant affinity has been 
recognized than that most artless affection existing between 
every laddie and his lassie on the one hand, and the silent orb of 
night, prosily called the moon, on the other. No one has ever 
failed to recognize this natural law of attraction. It may be 
the occasion of the sympathetic outpourings of the poet, of the 
tender picturings of the writer of fiction, of the pointed thrust 
of the merciless satirist at that spot where all are most defence- 
less; it matters not, all alike acknowledge the reality of the fact. 
And I most seriously question whether the genus homo is ever 
to be emancipated from the infection of this moony disorder. I 
would not be a pathological pessimist. Nor would I close my 
eyes to the fact that it is just beginning to dawn upon medicine 
that what the vaccine virus is to small-pox, so, doubtless, is 
some other something to each and all of their respective 
zymotic diseases. But who is that daring scientist who shall 
venture to charge the end of an ivory point with moonshine, so 
that the family physician may vaccinate the flower of the 
family with it, and by this means avert that singular malady 
where all the ordinary rules of good nursing must be reversed ; 
where the mother, by that strange exception which proves the 
rule of all other sicknesses, is not eligible as night-watcher, but 
the vigil must needs be kept by some youth of the masculine 
persuasion. Who in these later times could be found to exhibit 
a bravery which would dare persecutions compared with which 
those of Jenner appear as the coronation of popular approval ; 



58 REPRODUCTION. 

which would imprison in a hypodermic sjringe those "germs ,r 
found floating in countless myriads in the moonbeam, the growth 
and multiplication of which in the human heart when deposited 
there under favorable conditions is the essential cause of the 
disorder in question, and by carefully injecting them directly 
into the vein of the lovely Desdemona, without allowing them to> 
come in contact with any of the surrounding tissues, thereby 
accomplish an innoculation which shall render aged fathers for- 
ever safe from Moor and Koderigo alike ? I fear me that the 
cannonade greeting an innovation of such temerity would dwarf 
into insignificance the flame and thunder which surrounded the 
light brigade in their charge at Balaklava. 

Again, the friendship between the lovers and the moon is cer- 
tainly that attraction of opposite poles of which we hear so 
much. For they themselves are instinct with life, are full of 
the instincts of life, nothing is farther from their thought or 
desire than death. Yet in cultivating an admiration for the- 
mistress of night, they are forgetting their own planet, teem- 
ing with life, of which life they themselves are the highest man- 
ifestation, that they may remember that secondary planet, that 
dead planet, out of whose existence all life has fled, with no 
atmospheric sea enveloping its asperities of surface, where, says 
Humboldt, "no undulation of air can convey sound, song or 
speech." The breath of life is gone out from its rugged soli- 
tudes. The lovers are keeping watch with a mummy. 

How great the difference between that satellite and this world- 
home of ours. Here everything is life, life animal and life 
vegetable, so abounding and so intertwined that our friends the 
naturalists find it hard to draw for us the exact line where the 
one ceases and the other begins. The seas are peopled with an 
enormous citizenship ; the continents are crowded full with forms 
of life innumerable, both above and below their surface line \ 
even the air which enwraps us is alike pregnant with living forms. 
If you doubt this, listen to the words of an honored searcher into 



REPRODUCTION. 59 

nature's secrets. " It has been a common objection of Abiogen- 
ists that, if the doctrine of biogeny is true, the air must be thick 
with germs ; and they regard this as the height of absurdity. 
But Nature occasionally is exceedingly unreasonable, and Pro- 
fessor Tyndall has proved that this particular absurdity may 
nevertheless be a reality. He has demonstrated that ordinary 
air is no better than a sort of stirabout of excessively minute 
solid particles." 

And all three, earth, air and sea, in the list of their inhabit- 
ants, include both the animal and vegetable. Their name is 
literally legion. Sir John Lubbock, in his address last year 
before the British Association, said on this point ; " As regards 
descriptive biology, by far the greater number of species now 
recorded have been named and described within the last half 
century. Dr. Gunther has been good enough to make a calcula- 
tion for me. The numbers, of course, are only approximate ; 
but it appears that, while the total number of animals described 
up to 1831 was not more than 70,000, the number now is, at 
least, 320,000. Lastly, to show how large a field still remains 
for exploration, I may add that Mr. Waterhouse estimates that 
the British Museum alone contains not fewer than 12,000 species 
of insects which have not yet been described, while our collec- 
tions do not probably contain anything like one-half of those actu- 
ally in existence. Further than this, the anatomy and habits even 
of those which have been described offer an inexhaustible field for 
research, and it is not going too far to say that there is not a 
single species which would not amply repay the devotion of a 
life- time." Take the humming-bird. What would be your 
guess as to the number of its species \ Hardly, I imagine, that the 
number was some 400, yet such is the fact. The number of speci- 
mens of the humming bird in the British Museum is 1,500. 
These figures give some slight hint of the vast wealth of animal 
life lavished upon this earth. 

To this innumerable host add the rank and file of the vegetable 



60 REPKODUCTION. 

world, the microscopic and invisible as well as the visible ; and 
let your imagination give you a glimpse of what the intellect 
refuses utterly to grasp — the boundless tides of life ebbing 
and flowing and pulsating through this world. 

I say ebbing and flowing, for all living beings are subject to 
the laws of birth and death. Every organized being has its 
inevitable periods of birth, growth, maturity, decline, and death; 
which we can no more control than we can control the tides . 
We may build dykes against the tides and in a puny way arrest 
their overflowing at some little point, but the tide rises just the 
same, and the tiny barrier we have builded but emphasizes our 
powerlessness ; and we may modify the periods of life in their 
rise and fall, but they are none the less inevitable . 

JSTow let the law of death reign without its counterpoising, 
antagonistic law of birth. If you can, in imagination let death 
go on as usual for one hundred years, with no births in all that 
time to fill up the ranks. What desolation is on every hand at 
the end of that fatal century . The few scattered fragments of 
animal and vegetable life which might possibly survive, would 
be as a helpless old man lost in the catacombs. A few more 
years, and the blackened and scarred surface of our earth, 
become the vast burial-ground of man and mollusk, of tree 
and flower, would greet its satellite, the moon, in a common 
dismantlement, a mutual bereavement, a sisterhood of desola- 
tion; for life's ebbing tide has done its perfect work, and its 
retreating waves have left but a blackening ooze with no single 
individual life upon all its blighted surface to relieve the drear 
expanse of that all enshrouding pall. How all-powerful, how 
relentless, how resistless is this out-going tide. 

And yet the world of life moves on from year to year undis- 
turbed by any threatened destruction. Its unnumbered species 
are maintained with no haunting fear of extinction. The dread 
ebb-tide has met its equal and opposing force ; nay, more, has 
met that flood tide which, possibly, may more than counterbal- 



REPRODUCTION. 61 

ance its undermining undertow. We have called the ebb-tide 
death, and when we question nature as to the christening of this 
flood tide, she whispers that its name shall be called birth. 
For upon every organism from the lowest to the highest, is laid 
the imperative duty to increase and multiply ; to every organism 
is given the wonderful prerogative of the reproduction and per- 
petuation of its species ; to every one that patent of nobility 
which belongs alone to parentage ; to every one the benediction 
which comes alone from children. 

The magnitude of the work, the prerogative, thus laid upon 
the life of each generation, is as vast and inestimable as that 
life itself, with which it is commensurate. The immense aggre- 
gate never appeals to our attention by its own call to us. "We 
must seek it out if we would get a hint of its majesty. We 
know, perhaps, that our own household has been gladdened by 
the coming of a new life into its circle ; that the geranium in 
the window has blossomed ; that the robin 1 s nest in the old oak 
tree is full of a comical mixture of awkwardness and pin-feath- 
ers surmounted by enormous mouths ; but this no more suggests 
to us the mighty work of creation's perpetuation than the dew 
suggests Niagara. The whole world, with wonderful fidelity 
and devotion and self-sacrifice, is daily taking up the work given 
it to do in the high honor which the Creator has bestowed upon 
His created by making them, in turn, in a humble sense, His 
co-laborers in the work of creation, and the perpetuation of His 
handiwork. 

The great world is busy taking care of its childen. Ancient 
mythology tells us that Minerva sprang full-formed from the 
forehead of Jove ; but that is mythology and neither history 
nor fact. In some of the lowest organisms, it is true, the parent 
is merely sub-divided into two equal and independent organ- 
isms, both complete and mature at the moment of the multiplica- 
tion. But as we ascend in the scale of being, we find that the 
more generously endowed and delicately organized the species. 



62 



REPRODUCTION. 



the longer the childhood and the greater the demand upon the 
parental care and training. 

Notice the methods by which the operation of this great 
function of reproduction in all organized beings, is carried on. 
First of all we must fix clearly in our minds that what the mole- 
cule is to the unorganized body, the cell is, precisely, to the 
organized being. The molecule is the structural element or unit 
of the non-living substances which surround us on every hand; 
and the properties of these various substances, all the properties, 
depend upon and are found in the molecule, and hence the many 
observations upon molecular activity of which we hear so con- 
stantly. The cell is the structural element or unit of all the 
living, organized beings, the plants and animals so familiar to 
us all. This cell is a microscopic body, spherical in its primary 
form, but so modified by surrounding influences such as pressure, 
and others which we cannot so easily explain, that it assumes 
every conceivable shape, such as flat, star-shaped, cylindrical, 
etc. It consists, generally, of a cell wall which is the outer 
envelope, and the contents within, which includes the speroidal 
spot called the nucleus . But it is subject to many modifications. 
Thus the cell wall may not be demonstrable, there may be more 
than one nucleus, and the nucleus may contain a secondary body, 
the nucleolus. But whatever its changes of form, the cell is 
omnipresent in all tissues. All tissues are built up of these 
units. We cannot even dry our hands on a towel without rub- 
bing off on that towel some of these cells. And not only are 
these cells the building material of the tissues. They are the 
indefatigable workers as well, by means of whose energies the 
functions of organized bodies are carried on. Without their 
labor there could be no sustentation, no reproduction, no cor- 
relation. 

Everything being dependent thus upon cell activity ; living 
cells composing the fabric of which the body is built up ; cell 
labor furnishing the motive power by means of which the body per- 



REPRODUCTION. DO 

forms all its operations and discharges all its functions ; it is at 
once understood that reproduction is, can be, but an instance of a 
certain particular well defined cell activity and cell multiplica- 
tion, taking place under certain well-known limitations and con- 
ditions. In fact the same exact and orderly process as are all of 
nature's operations. This being true, logical deduction leads us 
straight to the supposition that, in spite of the apparently various 
methods of reproduction in the many species of plants and 
animals, such methods must in reality be few and closely allied. 
The correctness of this supposition is abundantly borne out by 
the facts. The methods are but three. They are technically 
known as reproduction by fission, by gemmation, by ovulation ; 
and we shall presently discover that they might all properly be 
included in one class, for they are all essentially the same, and 
are strikingly suggestive of the unity of all nature's works, the 
singleness of the universal plan. 

* What is generation by fission ? Why merely this. In the 
lowest forms of life, where we find the entire organism to con- 
sist of a mere speck of protoplasm, and where this single micro- 
scopic speck exercises all three of the functions of sustentation, 
generation and correlation, when the generative function is 
undertaken it is accomplished by the simple dividing into two 




Multiplication among the lowest organisms, the Moneka. A, an entire moner 
(Pbotamceba) ; B, the same with signs of subdivision into two parts; Ca and Cb, 
two individuals formed by subdivision of the first. 

of the speck which before was one. We discover it taking on a 
sort of hour-glass contraction, which progresses until division 



64 EEPEODUCTION. 

into two parts is complete; these resultant parts, like all good chil- 
dren, acquiring the form and size of the parent and repeating 
the reproductive process. This method of reproduction is welL 
shown in the accompanying cut, taken from Haeckel . 

When, a few years ago, we turned a deaf ear to art, banished 
the Yenus de Medici from our memory, and were swept away 
in an epidemic craze for the wasp waist and its necessary 
accompaniment, the corset, the artificial development of the 
human form divine was ludicrously suggestive of a sudden pas- 
sion for reproduction by fission . It was certainly favorable to 
neither of the other methods, to say nothing of the effect upon 
the general health ; and it is well that the fission furore is out 
of date. May it never gain a resurrection at the hands of that 
most phenominal vivifyer of the burial robes of the dead past 
who passes under the nom deplume of a lover of the antique. 

Before dismissing the mode of multiplication under consider- 
ation it should be noticed that the division of the parent may be 
into more than two parts ; and that it is legitimately entitled 
reproduction because the resulting parts are capable of giving 
rise in like manner to other organisms similar to themselves^ 
produced in precisely the same manner in which they them- 
selves were produced, and, in short, exhibit all the attributes 
of the original protoplasmic speck. 

This is reproduction by fission. Reproduction by gemmation 
differs from that of fission merely in this, that instead of a 
division into parts by which the parent disappears in its off- 
spring, a small fraction of the parental substance, a bud r 
becomes detached, which grows to the dimensions and likeness 
of its' parent as do the children of the higher animals, leaving 
the parent to still carry on its independent existence as before; 
and whenever you hear a lover of plants and flowers talking of 
" bulbs, "you may know that she is depending upon reproduc- 
tion by gemmation for the multiplication of her flowers. For 
propagation by bulbs is an instance of reproduction by gemma- 



KEPRODUCTION. 65 

tion. Fission merges the parent in the children, gemmation 
leaves the parent intact. The children of fission are orphans 
"by birth, gemmation has its grandfathers. 

But the method of reproduction obtaining with a vast major- 
ity of those plants and animals with which we are familiar, with 
which we come into daily contact and constantly see all about 
us, is that of ovulation. Ovulation is perhaps a strange and 
formidable word to us ; but ovulation is only the word used to 
designate the processes of the ovum, and ovum is only a Latin 
word whose English equivalent is egg, a word familiar enough 
to us all. Thus we see that ovulation means simply egg-ation. 
It may seem a startling statement to the ordinary reader who 
has never been a worker in this special department, that both 
himself and the field of grain which delights his eye, are the 
magic result of that form of cell activity which produces the 
egg and carries it to its perfect development ; that he is from 
the egg just as literally as the swallow which builds her nest 
under the eaves or among the rafters of his barn. Yet it is 
just as true as startling. 

But we must be sure that we know exactly what an egg is. 
We who have known the measureless childhood delight of 
scrambling up trees, skinning our knuckles and tearing our clothes 
that we might get a glimpse of the wonderful blue treasures of the 
robin's nest ; we who know how every care and cloud went out 
of the world when we started for the great rambling old barn to 
hunt the nests and capture the eggs ; we to whom that barn was 
a sort of inanimate guardian angel, else we had never felt so 
satisfied in its companionship nor been freed within its charmed 
precincts from the ordinary workings of the law of gravitation, 
but had broken our necks times without number ; we who have 
carried to the house the battered veteran of a straw hat filled 
with the spoils of the morning's expedition; we who, in later 
years, in the official seat of pater familias, have read in the 

(5) 



66 REPRODUCTION. 

market reports of the morning paper that the grocers have set 
as high a value on this commodity as do we on the memory of 
our childish sport, must not let the memory of the past, the 
grocer's bill of the present, nor the graven image of wood in 
the stocking basket, mislead us in our conception of an egg. 
It will not do to define an egg as something with a shell too frail 
to answer the purposes of a rustic seat, because in boyhood the 
stern school of experience taught us that our hat was not at all 
times an equally successful substitute for a hassock. As 
something with a " yelk " and a " white" which may become 
intermingled and odoriferous, because our boyhood's pants- 
pocket may have been suddenly transformed into a labratory 
enveloping sulphuretted hydrogen in a most uncalled-for and 
reckless manner. 

Take a hen's egg and break it upon a plate. Looking at it 
carelessly, you would say that it consisted of two parts, the 
white and the yelk. If you will look a little more closely you 
will see a third something — a little, opaque, whitish spot, con- 
tained within the white and near to the yelk. Suppose we call 
this spot the little yelk. We now recognize three things in the 
make up of our egg — the white, the big yelk, and the little yelk. 
The white is a mass of albumen. The big yelk is, in technical 
language, the nutritive yelk . It is so called because it is noth- 
ing more nor less than a store of nutriment laid up to meet the 
wants of the chick which is to be developed within the shell. 
This mass of albumen, and nutritive yelk are for the growth of 
the chick. They provide its food, and the building material 
from which its earliest frame is to be constructed. For the 
development of this particular egg into an independent organ- 
ism, takes place outside of and external to the mother organism, 
and hence must carry this necessary freight of provision with it. 
While in those higher animals, the mammals, which retain the 
ovum or egg within the organism of the mother, there constantly 
drawing needed supplies for its growth and development directly 



REPRODUCTION. 67 

from her, these adjunctive, nutritive, non-essential parts of the 
egg are dispensed with. The little yelk, the white spot, is, in 
technical language, the generative yelk. This little germinal 
spot has wrapped up in itself the entire significance of the whole 
egg. It is what determines the egg to be an egg. The other 
parts may be wanting ; this, never. They are non-essentials ; 
this, essential. They meet the peculiar conditions imposed upon 
a certain class of eggs ; this is the one essential factor without 
which no egg can be an egg anywhere in the vegetable or ani- 
mal world. Here, and here only, is to be found that peculiar 
cell activity and condition which can start the train of develop- 
ment which leads to a complete and perfect organism. Here is 
the vital spark. We wonder at its minuteness ; and yet when 
we remember the cell to be the basis of all organized being, we 
are led away from that mistaken habit of mind which only rec- 
ognizes " bigness based on quantity." 

The human ovum is a mere corpuscle, a nucleated cell; invis- 
ible to the eye, it being only from one one-hundredflh to one 
eight thousandth of an inch in diameter ; and having no invest- 
ing shell, there being no need for the presence of any such pro- 
tective wall. Upon this little cell, then, depends the march of 
humanity through the centuries. It is this cell, this ovulum, 
which is the casket holding the promise of the coming man. 
It is this cell that is potent with the highest creative power. 
The possibilities wrapped up in this minute cell, this microscopic 
human egg, make it a far more portentious epitome of life than 
the huge egg of the ostrich with its heavy freight of nutriment 
and shell. The import of the egg is centered in its germinal 
spot, not in the supply of food stored up to meet its earliest 
necessities. For the discovery of these eggs which are without 
shell, without large nutrient stores, which are developed within 
the organism instead of without, this mammalian ovum, we 
are indebted to Carl Ernst von Baer, German by birth, Russian 
by adoption. 



68 REPRODUCTION. 

Notice the similarity existing between the three methods of 
reproduction. Taking reproduction by fission as the type, we 
find that it is often difficult to draw the line between this method 
and gemmation. A single cell may be detached from the par- 
ent mass and develop into a complete organism of its species, 
in such a manner as to make it a matter of extreme difficulty to 
determine whether it belongs most to fission or gemmation ; 
the original distinction depending more upon relative mass than 
anything else . In ovulation we find the first sign that the egg 
is to develop into an organism, and not remain an egg subject to a 
retrograde metamorphosis, to be the segmentation of its sub- 
stance, the running of division lines and boundaries through its 
minute mass, its subdivision into a number of smaller cells. It 
goes without saying that this primary process of ovulation points 
us back to the primary method by fission, for the very meaning 
of that term is cleavage. The distinction to be noted here is 
that the decision of the fate of the ovum, whether it go forward 
to complete development into an independent organism, or suffer 
disintegration, hinges upon its contact, or failure of contact 
with the male element. Here, then, we must enlarge our field 
of vision sufficiently to include another salient point. Namely 
this . That as we pass from the lower organisms, where the 
same infinitesimal portion of protoplasm may assume all three 
of the functions of life — nutritive, generative and motive— to the 
higher, where separate organs are set apart for these several 
offices, reproductive organs begin to make their appearance, and 
finally become so complicated that the apparatus is divided and 
half given to one individual and half to another, thus creating 
the distinctions of male and female. So that the concurrent 
action of two individuals of the species, male and female, be- 
comes necessary for the production of a new being. 

To return to our study of resemblances. Gemmation means 
budding, and the analogy between the bud and the ovum "is 
very close. Professor Cleland well says that u if the bud happen 



REPRODUCTION. 69 

to be only a single nucleated corpuscle devoted to reproduction, 
separated from a large mass of such corpuscles or from an 
organism however complex, yet it is plain that it may be none 
the less fairly considered as a bud or germ from the whole 
organism. Now that is precisely what an ovum essentially is; 
but an ovum, whether animal or vegetable, has the peculiarity 
that it will not develop into a new individual unless there be 
incorporated with it another germ of dissimilar kind, though 
derived from the same species of organism, and herein consists 
the essence of sexual reproduction (Gramogenesis). " In short, 
the entire range of reproduction throughout the entire world of 
plant life and animal life, affords but three methods for the per- 
petuation of species. Nature's great facts admit no farther sub- 
division. To admit these three is an almost undue refinement. 
They form a trinity which is in essence one. Dr. Wilder 
remarks: " Notwithstanding many exceptions, it appears that, 
upon the whole, as we ascend in the scale of organization, the 
processes become more and more complex. But even in the 
highest stage there is really only a modification of the simple 
division which occurs in the lowest; for ovum and zo-osperm 
are merely internal offshoots, minute though they often are, 
from a parent stock. And it might be shown how gradual is 
the transition between the reproductive processes of the two 
extremes of animal life, the moner and the man. For the dif- 
ferences relate to the proportion between the stock and the bud, 
to the complexity of the organs and processes required for elab- 
orating the zo-osperms and the ovum, for effecting their contact, 
and for protecting and nourishing the latter during its develop- 
ment into a new individual." 

We have seen something of the immensity of the work of 
reproduction; something of the number of species and variety 
of forms which its instrumentality perpetuates upon our earth ; 
something of the methods by which this multiplication is 
accomplished; something of the resemblances between these 



10 



REPRODUCTION. 



methods which identify each with each and make all one. See- 
ing these things has been as if we were being shown the plan of the 
King's gardens,— and the King's gardens are so very wonder- 
ful and so very beautiful. We have been inconsistent with our- 
selves so long; have celebrated birthdays with shouts, and 
spoken of birth in shamed whispers ; have made the child the 
symbol of all that is innocent and pure, and then asserted vehe- 
mently that the doctor brought him ; have paid unstinted hom- 
age to woman, in public as well as private, and suppressed the 
mention of her matchless crown ; that it is most restful to rec- 
ognize the divine plan, and feel that in this, as with all studies of 
the omnipotent designs, we are ennobled by the knowledge 
imparted. That what we had feared and shunned as containing 
only possibilities of temptation, proves to be a strong arm for 
our uplifting. How fascinating is it to observe the decorations 
of honor bestowed upon this function. u Behold what pomp, 
what joys, what glory, and what magnificence, are prepared by 
nature for the marriages of plants and animals ! How the lion 
and bull pride themselves on their strength, the antelope 
on his figure, the peacock and swan on their plumage, the fish 
on its silvery coat, and on the splendor of the golden and bril- 
liant appearance of its body. How the butterfly expands its 
diamond wings, how the fiower displays its charms to the rays 
of Aurora, enjoys in silence and drinks the pearly drops of the 
dew. All is the radiance of beauty in nature ; the earth, cov- 
ered with verdure, resounds with accents of joy and sighs of 
pleasure ; all exhale love, all search for it and enjoy it — in a 
word, it is the common festival of beings." * 

The flowers ; what other adornment has mother earth to com- 
pare with them. We persuade them to blossom in the yard ; 
to bloom in the windows of our home ; we sfiower them upon 
our sons and daughters as from commencement platforms they 
take the leap into life's restless current; we twine them in the 

*Julien Joseph Virey. (Ryan). 



REPRODUCTION. 71 

hair of the newly-crowned bride ; we bear them to the stricken 
pillow of the sick ; with tear-dimmed eyes we strew them upon 
the casket which holds the precious, perished ashes ; we love 
them that they grow so trustfully upon the grassy mound . Did 
you ever stop to think that a flower's work is resurrection % 
That the flower is the reproductive apparatus of the plant, fitly 
adorned for its high office ? Yet so it is. Ah! how beautifully 
and tenderly the great Father over all has spoken to his chil- 
dren down through all the ages by his flowers, that they must 
never forget the sacredness and purity and fragrance of parent- 
age. Genial Dr. Holcombe of New Orleans remarks : ' ' The 
sexuality of plants is so apparent that they have been divided 
into phanerogamic and cryptogamic, or plants with open mar- 
riages and plants with concealed or not clearly discoverable 
marriages. In some forms of the vegetable kingdom the sexes 
are as distinct to view as in animals ; and their iuterchanges of 
love are wafted to and fro by the feet and wings of insects and 
the whispering currents of the concerting winds. When a bee 
has gathered honey from a male flower, he will alight the next 
time only on the female flower of the same species, where he 
shakes from his body the golden dust which impregnates the 
receptive plant with the aromal life of her distant lover." 

The stamens and pistils are the essential portions of the 
reproductive apparatus, the former being the male organs, the 
latter the female. The stamens produce a powder-like sub- 
stance called pollen, familiar to us all, which fertilizes the 
ovules, or rudimentary seeds found in the ovary of the pistils \ 
and thus is produced a perfect seed capable of development 
into a perfect plant. Just how the pollen gains access to and 
influences the embryo cell in this all-important manner we do 
not know. We are wholly ignorant of the nature of the influ- 
ence exerted by the male element upon the female in the case 
of both plants and animals. All we can affirm is that it is the 
union of the two protoplasmic masses ; which, with many 



72 REPRODUCTION. 

plants and lower animals, are the product of different parts of 
the same individual ; but in other plants and animals, including 
the human species, they are always developed in their respect- 
ive male and female organisms, and reproduction can be accom- 
plished only by the concurrent action of two individuals. 

It is not a little remarkable that these two minute proto- 
plasmic masses should in themselves contain the qualities of 
organism, of mind, and of general resemblance, which go to 
make up the hereditary stamp of the future individual. Our 
mental and physical characteristics are inevitably hereditary in 
their nature; although, as Dr. Flint says, " no definite rule can 
be laid down with regard to the transmission of mental or phys- 
ical peculiarities to offspring. Sometimes the progeny assumes 
more the character of the male than of the female parent, and 
sometimes the reverse is the case, without any reference to the 
sex of the child; sometimes there appears to be no such rela- 
tion; and occasionally we note peculiarities derived apparently 
from grandparents. This is true with regard to pathological as 
well as physiological peculiarities, as in inherited tendencies to 
certain diseases, malformations, etc." As to the mother's 
qualities, it may be urged that the new organism develops for 
months within her own, and that this would sufficiently explain 
any stamping of her own qualities upon the offspring. Without 
stopping to discuss the soundness of this view, we notice that 
the father plays as important a part in and makes as large con- 
tribution to the hereditary make-up of the child as the mother; 
and if these transmitted qualities of the father are not wrapped 
up in the original protoplasmic bestowment of the male element, 
it is difficult to see in what manner they become engrafted upon 
the new organism. " No exception is, at this time, known to 
the general law, established upon an immense multitude of 
direct observations, that every living thing is evolved from a 
particle of matter in which no trace of the distinctive characters 
of the adult form of that living thing is discernible. 1 ' (Darwin.) 



REPRODUCTION. 73 

The devices of nature to protect and care for the seeds of 
plants, those unborn babes of the vegetable world, which are 
cast off from the parent and left to shift for themselves, are 
marvelous and multitudinous. A single instance must suffice. 
Mr. Warder of Ohio has discovered how this care is manifested 
in the case of water-lilies. Their seeds are heavier than water, 
and if allowed to fall out and sink to the bottom, their new life 
would have to contend with that of the older and stronger 
plants. To meet this emergency we find them provided with a 
cellular substance called an arillus, which swells and becomes 
filled with air, so that when they are projected upon the water 
each one finds itself with its life-preserver on and in proper pos- 
ition, by means of which it may make a long journey, termin- 
ated only when the air is expelled or the substance decays, 
when it gains a final resting place at the bottom. 

It may be objected that while plant reproduction offers a 
close and pleasing analogy to reproduction in man, yet still the 
beauty inwrought with the flower finds no counterpart in the 
case of the human species. I would not ignore the position of 
the reproductive apparatus as placed in the human body. 
Possibly it may have been so placed in contiguity to vessels 
which we consider the less honorable that we might be led away 
from an undue dwelling upon the mere pleasures and mechan- 
ism of the function, to the greater contemplation of the higher 
and truer significance of generation in its bestowment upon us 
■of the honors and responsibilities of parentage. However this 
may be, we are still without excuse if we fall into the too com- 
mon mistake of looking on this apparatus as an unclean thing. 
To it belongs none of the more humble offices of digestion and 
nutrition. For its support the system tenders the life current 
that it may have its energies all conserved for the one great 
work given it to do. Its surfaces are lined with a pure and 
wonderfully organized mucous membrane, the delicacy and 
complexity of which put to shame that of the lip. We must 



74 



KEPEODUCTION. 



confess that the honored mouth, which gives utterance to 
the thoughts of the mind, upon whose gateways the light of 
the inner life is constantly playing in reflected expression, is 
compelled to do duty also as the receiver and masticator of 
food, which is a comparatively humble office. To this work is 
it due that the mouth does not cleanse itself perfectly — we must 
cleanse it ; while those precincts which are the birthplace of 
life are emancipated from the entrance of anything that defileth, 
and this earliest cradle knows not even the fear of slightest 
contamination, and the couch of life's tiniest beginning is 
snowy white in its unstained spotlessness. 

Though in the flower the stamens and pistils are often very 
beautiful, yet it is not in these, the essential sexual organs, that 
the chief beauty lies, but in those surrounding petals which our 
botanical friends call the corolla. And I submit that from Lin- 
naeus down, no botanist has ever been able to show us any cor- 
olla to compare with the human form divine. No stamen or pistil 
ever had such peerless adorning as is the human form and 
feature. I do not speak now of the Adonis side of the ques- 
tion. No one has ever denied the surpassing beauty of the 
most perfect manly development in the pride of its splendid 
strength. No traitor from his own ranks, and no insidious 
enemy from the other camp has ever whispered in his ear the 
poisoned thought that the exercise of the procreative duty, the 
high creative privilege, was not one of the noblest exercises of 
his truest manliness ; something vouchsafed to him as a high 
prerogative by the very attainment of that same manhood. 
No, it has never occured to him to doubt it, and no enemy has ever 
hoped to make him believe it, and no discussion is called for 
here. But it is high time that some champion with lance in 
rest should espouse the cause of the true temple of Yenus, 
which has suffered great desecration at the hands of this age 
and nation. Not that woman should be made a mere embodiment 
of the reproductive function, and nothing else, any more than we 



REPRODUCTION. .75 

should so set down the man. But let it be fearlessly asserted 
that motherhood is woman's royal diadem. I care not how 
many other crowns you give her, none will ever approach this 
in splendor ; no other title can convey a tithe of its nobility. 
For this reason, including the lesser in the greater, it is right 
and proper to claim for motherhood that beauty of form, of 
feature, of mind, and of soul, which have been alike sung by 
poet, sworn by knight, and testified by all ever since the morn- 
ing star3 sang together, and evening's softening twilight brought 
clear vision unto earth-dimmed sight. ' ' Woman's rights. " Ah 
yes, may she have them all, have them all now . May any 
that are withheld be delivered to her now and immediately. 
But how strange is it that woman's bitterest enemies, her most 
insidious foes, many of them foes of her own household, should 
make woman's rights the stop-thief cry under cover of which 
they seek to rob her of her highest honor, cast her down from 
her most uplifted throne, drive her from her most resplendent 
and sacred temple, question the dignity of motherhood. With 
such I can have no patience. The forbearance all belongs with 
those who have joined the cry without perceiving the sinister 
motive ; and they are now so large a majority that the " move- 
ment" has been redeemed. But the really guilty deserve the 
severest censure. For as upon the mother falls the greater share 
in the parental work, so is her honor proportionately great. 

Ah, these mothers of ours ! Will a stupid world never real- 
ize their omnipotent power and blessing and benediction. 
They alone welcome us to this earth to which we come as abso- 
lute strangers. And as we grow into childhood's joys and 
childhood's sorrows and childhood's fears, she is the one 
impregnable bulwark between us and all the vicissitudes of the 
outer world ; her breast a breastwork of protection for us such 
as is never found elsewhere or afterward ; affording us perfect 
security from the rude strife and contention which belong to 
the pitiless march of life to and fro in the world about us. 



76 



REPRODUCTION. 



But the years glide by. Happy, happy years, which pass all 
too quickly and never come again ; and the day is drawing 
nearer when we must leave the rampart so tried and true and 
launch our frail bark upon the hurrying, restless tide of this 
world's life. We have set the day weeks beforehand. Some- 
how we had thought it would be a grand day for us, yet every little 
while when we come in unexpectedly mother's eyes are full of 
tears, and we wonder, and begin to doubt our own estimate of 
this great day, — but no, she blesses us even through her tears, 
and mother always knew what was best, so it must be all right, 
and we put away the questioning. But at last the trunk is 
packed. We had meant to pack it ourselves, for it would be in 
some sort an assertion of our new-found independence to pack 
our own trunk as we started off. But by some means which we 
did not notice at the time, it happened that she packed it after 
all. Probably it was because she was so vigilant to see that 
there was no button off any of the shirts, or in danger of com- 
ing off; that there was a good supply of handkerchiefs ; that 
there should be two new night-shirts lest the others should give 
out sooner than expected ; that there were no thin places in any 
of the stockings; because she knew just where everything was 
and so could pack the trunk better than we . And then too, we 
afterward kept finding little things in various nooks and corners 
which she had put there to surprise us. But never mind, be 
that as it may, she packed the trunk. 

I wonder how it happened that mother didn't eat any break- 
fast that morning. Boys dou't often notice such things, so she 
must have eaten very little indeed for we boys noticed it. And 
then too at family worship that morning as we sing "My Days 
Are Gliding Swiftly By, " we notice* that mother's voice 
trembles, and we look up quickly, but she is not looking at us 
and she must be thinking about something else. Then the old 
stage-coach rumbles up to the front gate, and of course the 
driver is in a hurry and we must hasten to be gone. The trunk 



REPRODUCTION. 77 

is carried out, and the valise ; but there is mother with two or 
three parcels which we don't know anything about. She tells 
us the big one is our lunch which she is sure we shall need, and 
we wonder why she should think that we needed about ten 
times as much to eat as we should if at home, — and the other 
bundles are some "last things" she says. We don't like to 
take them, for there are some other people in the stage, and we 
don't want them to think that we have to be taken care of just 
like children. But she says that they are things which we shall 
need, and we are not quite graceless enough, just then, to argue 
the matter. For somehow it has just begun to come over us that 
this going away isn't quite so glorious as we thought it was 
going to be. At any rate there. is something else all mixed up 
with the glorious in the queerest sort of fashion. But the 
driver is impatient to be off; and mother's arms are about our 
boyish necks for just a moment, and the sacred baptism of her 
tears is upon our heads, — and the stage has started off down 
the road and taken us with it. We sit very straight and stiff, 
and try to see out of the corners of our eyes if the other pas- 
sengers are looking at us. And now we have reached the turn, 
and must get the last glimpse now or not at all. And all at 
once we forget to care what* the other passengers may think, 
and lean far out of the stage. There is the old home just going 
out of sight; and in front of the open gate stands mother, 
waving her white handkerchief. The stage sways as it rounds 
the turn, and home and mother are lost to sight. Ah, that 
white fluttering handkerchief; flag of a mother's love and 
prayers and tears ; flag of the world's hope. The black flag of 
the Sultan is but an impotent rag compared with that all-power- 
ful flag of love and memory. Flag that is never furled ; flag 
that floats alike through storm and calm, through tempest and 
sunshine ; ever urging us onward to the highest purpose, the 
noblest endeavor, the truest work, the most unfaltering faith 
and trust. Flag of motherhood we salute you. Not with noise 



78 REPRODUCTION. 

of powder and cannon, not with the honors that are paid to 
earthly governments ; but with that homage which is deeper than 
the heart, that love which is stronger than the heart. Flag 
that is mistress of the world ; motherhood divine ! 

The eminent French physiologist, Claude Bernard, has said 
some very interesting things about the connecting links between 
the functions of reproduction and nutrition, for the translation 
of which I am indebted to Dr. Wilder, in an appendix to his 
work. Bernard says : 

" All the phenomena of living beings have a common origin, 
the cell. The cell and the ovum are constructed upon the same 
type. The egg divides, segments and produces an infinite num- 
ber of cells. The phenomena of prolification are at their 
greatest activity in the embryo. We shall show that cellular 
multiplication also exists and continues in the adult. 

"The researches of Schleiden upon the vegetable tissues, 
those of Schwann upon animal anatomy have been the basis of 
the present ideas respecting the cellular elements and their 
office in the development of tissues. There is a period of embry- 
onic life when the new being is made up only of cells called the 
embryonic cells, namely, at the moment of the formation of the 
blastoderm. At a later period the cells differentiate and thus 
provide for the production of the various anatomical elements. 
The organism composed of cells is sustained only by their con- 
stant renewal. These cells develop themselves so as to produce 
the different organs. We shall say a few words upon the laws 
which govern their development. 

' ' When we examine the primitive cell, the egg, we see, after 
fecundation, that it segments and gives rise to elements like 
itself. These primary cells which result from the division of the 
egg are the embryonic cells. All the organs pass through this 
state. With an embryo already formed, that is to say, when 
the trunk, the limbs and the main outlines are recognizable, the 
muscles, the liver, the kidneys, are distinct as to form ; but, if 



REPRODUCTION. 79 

we take these organs and examine their structure we find that 
it is identical in all ; they are all composed of embryonic cells. 
The form of the organs preceeds the details of their structure. 

"Thus every tissue begins by being formed of embryonic 
cells, and is organized by the transformation of these primitive 
elements. But how then does this embryonic cell give rise, one 
after another, to the different tissues % 

"According to a theory adopted in Germany, one cell can 
transform itself into another, one tissue into another tissue, a 
cartilage cell into a bone cell. 

"The works of H. Muller and Ranvier upon the development 
of bone have shown, on the contrary, that, neither the cells nor 
the tissues are capable of being transformed directly into other 
tissues or cells. It is not the same element which passes directly 
from the first form into the second ; there has been an interme- 
diate evolution. When a cartilage is about to ossify, the carti- 
lage cell is destroyed, disappears, and returns to the embryonic 
condition, and it is from this last that it becomes a bone cell. 
This law applies to all cases of this kind to such an extent that 
we may say that the phenomena of regeneration take place by 
a return to the embryonic condition which always marks the com- 
mencement of repair or of metamorphosis of tissue. 

" These phenomena occur by virtue of two principal conditions, 
one being the autonomy of the elements, the other the influence 
of the region in which they live and are evolved. We have 
been accustomed to over-estimate the importance of the first of 
these conditions, and to underrate the second. We nave had a 
wrong idea respecting the autonomy of the elements, which has 
been declared to be entire and absolute. The different cells of 
the body of an animal are not absolutely independent elements; 
sprung from a single cell, the egg, which has imparted to them 
a particular nutritive and reproductive property, they bear the 
stamp of this common origin which forms a bond of union 
between them ; they are always subject to the influence of this 



80 REPRODUCTION. 

prior state, which explains and affects their actual evolution. 
Undoubtedly they have a certain activity of their own ; each has 
special conditions of life, of death, of reactions and of poisoning. 
But this independence has its limits ; it stops at the point where 
elements tend to become distinct organisms. 

"The experiments upon which we base the idea of autonomy 
are very remarkable ; especially those relating to the develop- 
ment of osseous- tissue. The works of Duhamel and of Flourens 
have taught us that bone is formed at the expense of the inner 
layer of periosteum. We know that this is through a pro- 
gressive and retrogressive evolution of embryonic cells which 
exist under the periosteal membrane ; but it is through the 
experiments of Oilier that the autonomy of these elements has 
been most clearly exhibited. Taking a bit of periosteal mem- 
brane retaining its inner layer of young, newly-formed cells, M. 
Oilier transplanted it to a region where no bone existed, under 
the skin of the back. The fragment of periosteum developed, 
ossified, and gave rise to an osseous formation. These elements 
have then a life of their own, to a certain extent independent 
of the medium in which they are. 

" Yet that conclusion is not rigorously correct. The studies 
upon the same subject have led to the conclusion that the influence 
of the region has no less an effect upon the development and 
final condition of the tissues. This second part of the demon- 
stration is due to various experiments, and particularly to those of 
Philippeaux. Repeating the experiments of Oilier, Philippeaux 
has shown that if the observation be continued for a longer 
time the new bone, formed from transplanted periosteum, grad- 
ually disappears, is reabsorbed, and that in its place is found 
only the proper tissue of that region. In that second phase of 
the experiment, the activity peculiar to the elements has given 
way to the influence of the region. 

" There is another experiment due to Eanvier, and which we 
must interpret in the same sense. Taking a very young animai, 




Stomach, liver, small intestine, etc. (Sappey. ) 

inferior surface of the liver; 2, round ligament of the liver; 3, gall-bladder; i, superior surface of 
the right lobe of the liver; 5, diaphram; 6, lower portion of the oesophagus; 7. stomach; 8, gastro- 
hepatic omentum; 9, spleen; 10, gastro- splenic omentum; 11, duodenum; 12, 12, small intestine; 13; 
caecum; 14, appendix vermiformis ; 15, 15, transverse colon ; 16, sigmoid flexure of the colon; 17, urin- 
nry bladder. 



JREPRODUCTION. 81 

Ranvier removed a metatarsal bone and grafted it upon the skin 
of the back. The little bone grew at first, but did not fail 
afterward to undergo the phenomena of retrogression, and in 
its place was to be found only the tissue of that region. Mean- 
time, in the place of the removed metatarsal a new bone had 
apppeared. 

"Certain organs manifest in their functions oscillations of 
greater or less extent, in the intervals of which they atrophy 
and seem to diminish. We have already mentioned the contin- 
ual shedding of epithelium. Goodsir admitted that each 
digestion is attended by a loss and renewal of intestinal epithel- 
ium. In the trachea, (windpipe), there is an analogous process 
under certain pathological conditions. Hunter has shown that 
in the sparrow the generative organs, ovary and testis, atrophy 
and diminish until the time when their functions are again 
called into action . Stannius has made a similar observation 
with certain batrachians. More than this, these phenomena of 
retrogression and repair extend to the nerves and nervoua 
ganglia attached to these organs. In all these cases the repair 
is accomplished by a mechanism analogous *to that of the devel- 
opment of the embryo. 

" Certain instances of loss and regeneration are even more 
complete. Among the lower animals a limb, a part of the 
body, even half of the animal may be replaced at the expense 
of the remaining parts. Thus a planaria cut in two, forms two> 
planariae like the first ; it is a sort of artificial fissiparity. The 
anterior half adds to itself a posterior half, and the posterior 
half forms an anterior half. But the two planariaB created in 
this manner, taken together, only make up the same bulk as 
the original animal. 

" If, then, we continue the subdivision there will come a time 
when reconstruction is no longer possible unless we wait until 
the animal has had time to acquire its normal size. It is nee- 

(6) 



82 • REPRODUCTION. 

essary to understand also that the newly developed portion is 
not a mere bud of the pre-existing fragment, but this latter is 
used as a whole to form a new planaria. 

' 4 With some reptiles, as the lizards, a part may be replaced 
after destruction. The tail of a lizard, if cut off, is reproduced. 
By weighing the animal before the experiment and after the 
restoration of the part, we find that it is at the expense of the 
proper substance that the injured part is repaired. Duges even 
obtained a still more curious result from the following experi- 
ment. He cut the tail half through at the base. It remained 
adherent, and in the wound a second was developed. The 
lizard, after cicatrization, had two tails. With the Crus- 
tacea a limb removed is replaced by another; the latter is 
formed under the carapace, and only increases at the time this 
is shed. 

" This repair of lost parts, among the lower animals, has 
suggested a question, the solution of which by experiment will 
have the highest interest. Can a limb removed in its totality be 
replaced by another? Philippeaux, making his experiments 
upon the salamander, has noted that when the whole limb, 
together with the shoulder, is removed, no renewal takes place. 
This would indicate that the limb may be a sort of unity in 
itself, and that the part left attached to the animal acts as a 
germ whence proceeds the new limb. 

"On the other hand, Legros has performed experiments in 
which, having removed the entire stump, including the shoul- 
der, with the greatest care, he has nevertheless, as he states, 
obtained a regeneration. If there is no error in the mode of 
operating, there may be some condition sufficient to account for 
the contradictory results. It would be necessary to ascertain, 
for instance, whether, according to the age of the animal, the 
limb can reproduce itself or not when removed completely, as 
we would be authorized to think from analogous facts. 

' ' We have already had occasion to cite the experiments of 



REPRODUCTION. 83 

M. de Sinety upon the ablation of the mammary gland with 
Guinea-pigs. This operation had been at first performed upon 
adult females, with the purpose of learning whether, at the 
time of parturition, the organ would be reproduced. Nothing 
of the kind took place, and the young died of hunger, parturi- 
tion having gone on as usual. Repeating the experiments upon 
very young individuals, M. de Sinety found the gland repro- 
duced ; and in one case a new nipple was perfectly formed. It 
might still be objected that with young animals the gland could 
not be properly said to exist as yet ; that possibly there had 
been removed only the tissue which ought to produce it, and 
that embryonic cells which escaped removal had served as the 
point of departure for the regeneration of the organ. The 
results are none the less remarkable. 

" With the higher animals, other tissues, and even the most 
specialized, the nerves, for example, are still capable of regen- 
eration. We have no intention of entering into the details of 
all these phenomena ; we wish only to show that regeneration 
takes place always by the same process, through the medium of 
an embryonic tissue . If we cut the sciatic nerve of an animal, 
there results in the corresponding limb a loss of function, pa- 
ralysis of sensibility and of motion. After a time, varying 
according to the species, we find that the properties of the nerve 
are restored; we must then admit that the organ is re-established. 
M Ranvier has studied with great care all the anatomical phe- 
nomena of the degeneration and regeneration of nerves, apply- 
ing to that study the new light resulting from his investigations 
upon the structure of the nerves. M. Ranvier has found that 
the nerve tube is not an anatomical unit. Of the three parts which 
compose a nerve fibre, the sheath of Schwann (commonly known 
as neurilemma), the envelope of myeline (commonly known as 
the white substance of Schwann), and the axis-cylinder, one 
only is continuous throughout the entire nerve ; this is the axis- 
cylinder. The other two are interrupted at intervals by con- 



g^ REPRODUCTION. 

strictions. They are segments placed end to end, each having 
a nucleus, and comporting themselves like cellular elements. 
After the section of the nerve, the peripheral portion degener- 
ates ; the myeline becomes opaque and granular. The nuclei of 
the segments multiply, the axis cylinder disappears. Then, 
after a certain time, a work of regeneration commences, starting 
from the central portion, and the segments of the nerve fibre 
are reconstructed. 

"Now these segments have a certain length, about one milli- 
metre in the adult, but varying in young animals according to their 
stage of development. If, then, we examiue these segments in 
a nerve in process of reconstruction, we find that they become 
longer and longer, and that these variations in length corres- 
pond precisely with those which we observe in the foetus during 
development. In short, the regeneration of nerves is accom- 
plished in the same way as is that of the tissues which we have 
studied, by the embryonic processes. 

"This general law establishes a new bond of union between 
the evolutional phenomena which constitute reproduction and 
those which belong to nutrition, properly so-called, for redinte- 
gration and regeneration may thus be regarded as intermediate 
between reproduction and nutrition." 



CHAPTER IV. 



ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLGT. 

The science of anatomy depends upon our ability to see. 
And the ability to see is not by any means a mere question of 
eyesight. An oculist may pronounce our eyes perfect, and yet 
we may be so ignorant of real seeing, that it would be ludi- 
crous were it not so pitiful. It is true, we must have eyes, and 
in following out the structure of our own bodies into its minuter 
details, we must invent microscopes to carry our eyes into the 
innermost recesses. But a musket and a cartridge are not the 
war of the Revolution. The possession of eyes is not seeing. 
We go out into the woods in June, and think we are enchanted 
with the new, fresh, sweet-scented life which has awakened on 
every hand. Yet how many of us ever see a leaf ; A leaf is a 
leaf to us, and that is all. It makes little difference whether it 
be oak, or maple, or poplar, or birch. The chances are that 
we have never really seen the individuality of size and shape 
and thickness; or the delicate veins; or the difference in texture 
and color of the two sides, and asked the reason why. The 
wild flowers have blossomed thick about us on every hand, yet 
we refuse to see the calyx and corolla, the stamens and pistils, 
the cotyledons and plumules, but insist that some one else, who 
is not blind like us, shall see them for us and write it down on 
paper, where we may read it. Only at second-hand will we 
consent to see ; and turn ourselves away from the living, breath- 
ing woodland, teeming on every hand with life vegetable and 
life animal, to seek the lifeless printed page. The real faculty 
of vision lies back of the eyeball. Images thrown upon the 
retina are transformed into impressions which travel back over 



86 ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 

the optic nerve to certain cells of the brain which can take cog- 
nizance of them, and so we see. Most of us are content to cut 
this nerve of communication, and let all the useful and beauti- 
ful things of the great world about us fall on a half-insensible 
retina, while the brain heedlessly slumbers on. Real seeing, 
seeing fit to be called such, involves both sight and insight. It 
will be a coronal day for our schools of learning when they 
shall come into the possession of the truth that education can 
have no greater aim than the giving of sight to the blind. 
"Up to the day when I took my diploma, there had been, 1 
may say, nothing in my education that required me to use my 
eyes or any of my senses or perceptions for any purpose, save 
to read the printed page. I had been taught no knowledge, 
and no means of acquiring knowledge, except from books. Of 
knowledge — at first hand — of observation through the senses of 
the myriad activities and beauties which make up this divine 
world, I had learned absolutely nothing. When in the junior 
year we came at last to make some acquaintance with nature's 
workings, we were totally unversed in the use of our faculties 
except through books — so we were introduced to Nature her- 
self through books alone — that is, at second-hand. We were 
taught a little chemistry, but in such fashion that we never 
handled a chemical substance, or saw one save at a distance, in 
the recitation-room. We were taught a little geology — but 
with no more personal acquaintance with the rocks than could 
be gathered from one or two afternoon strolls with an instruc- 
tor. We studied astronomy for two terms without once being 
called upon to look at the stars. Of the growth of the grass 
blade and the tree — of the processes and laws of our own bodies — 
not a jot or a tittle was given in the preparatory or collegiate 
course. 

" Worse than all these specific defects, the whole habit of 
personal observation of the phenomena and processes of the 
material world — that material world through whose forms the 



ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 87 

spiritual world discloses itself to man — was left out of our edu- 
cation entirely. And that omission for myself I unspeakably 
lament. History and literature I can to some extent pick up as 
I go along. I can hobble on my way though unequipped with 
German or French. But I never shall get that intelligent, sys- 
tematic, working knowledge of my physical environments, for 
which the aptitude and instinct might have been easily gained 
when I was fourteen or sixteen — when I was buried in Greek 
paradigms, stumbling through houleuo and the uses of the sub- 
junctive. And as I walk among the wonders of nature, moved 
by their beauty, but ignorant of their interior processes — ignor- 
ant of how the leaf germinates and ripens and falls, vaguely 
guessing at the story of the immortal past written in this river 
valley and its mountain portals — in my mingled wonder and 
ignorance I am like a child untaught to read, wandering 
through the library — he admires the pictures, but the text is 
meaningless to him. In my youth I was given indeed some of 
the keys to the richest literature, but of things 1 never learned 
the alphabet. I acquired no use of my perceptions save with 
my eyes to read the written page and with my ears to hear my 
instructor's voice." * 

In the study of anatomy we should not depend altogether 
upon the printed page which records what others have seen. For 
although the inner mechanism of the human body can be seen 
only in schools of special training, the dissecting room does not, 
by any means, hold within itself all the possibilities of know- 
ledge in this direction. There are three anatomies. Standing 
first in logical order, and, as history shows us, first also to be 
apprehended by man, we have the anatomy of ocular inspection. 
It assumes not the daring desecration of the knife, but views 
the structure in its perfect and completed whole, with no thought 
of separating part from part, just as it might view the completed 
Cologne cathedral, feeling that any hand raised to lift inquiringly 
* Geo. S. Merriam at the Yale Alumni Meeeting. 



88 ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 

the slightest finial, was a wanton hand. It sees the commanding 
head, the swelling chest, the sensitive loin, the extremities with 
their knotted power, the whole in its undivided, unbroken sym- 
metry. All this, and much more, may we possess ourselves of, 
without the aid of book or teacher, if we have learned how to 
see. Art arrived at perfection in this department of anatomy 
many centuries ago. It was inevitable that such should be the 
fact. For art is but the science of sight ; and in the study of 
the material world, sight must be first, and the obvious must 
come before the obscure . 

'Next in order is the anatomy of the knife. It reveals to us 
the muscle, and its sinewy grip upon the bony framework ; the 
arteries and veins in their accompaniment of each other to every 
corner of the organism, carrying food to the tissues, and bringing 
away the chips which tell the story of that tissue's work, for 
every honest workman is known by his chips ; the nerves whose 
delicate threads carry the messages of sensation, and of com- 
mand to action, back and forth over its perfect system of teleg- 
raphy with tireless activity and never-failing accuracy. 

And there is one more anatomy. We bring in the microscope, 
and find that the workmanship displayed in the building of this 
body of ours, surpasses the test of the most skillful artizanship. 
For the microscope detects no crudity, but finds itself unable to 
follow to the end that piece of workmanship which grows ever 
greater under increasing minuteness of scrutiny. 

Each of these three anatomies is wonderful in itself. Galen 
could have known nothing of the witchery of the microscope, 
when he said that the anatomy of the human body "was a sublime 
hymn in honor of the Deity. Valsalva had not as yet spent 
those sixteen ripe, devoted years in unravelling the mys- 
teries of the human ear. But though Galen did not have the 
light of these later days, he caught the inspiration of the dis- 
coveries to come, no less than, with a wonderfully seeing eye, he 
pushed his own investigations in this direction far beyond the 



ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 89 

attainment of his age. And we can but echo his sentiment ; 
and with our knowledge of the beauty of the finished work, the 
mechanics and economics of its interior processes, the amazing 
greatness of its microscopic detail, send it back to him across 
the centuries with all the added emphasis of the knowledge of 
to-day . 

It is told of an eminent divine, that when, bowed with grief, 
he followed his son to the grave, he exclaimed to the bearers, 
" Young men, tread carefully, for you bear the Temple of the 
Living God! " Magnificent temple; but greater the immortal 
spirit which had deserted it. That to us should be entrusted 
the erection of new temples, and the inauguration of new lives 
— does it not seem a very great honor ? Having received such 
notable preferment, it becomes us to carry ourselves in such 
manner as may not belittle or disgrace our high station. There 
is no more painful lack in character ever exhibited, than that 
depraved, poverty-stricken quality of mind which has no respect 
to pay to that which is entitled to homage, and no appreciation 
of the sanctity of that which is truly sacred. 

For the accomplishing of this function of reproduction, there 
has been set apart a portion of our organism. It is given us solely 
for this purpose. It is dedicated exclusively to this one great 
office. It is called upon to perform no other duty. It is true 
that the urine is discharged through the urethra, but that is 
merely an accident of position ; and when the apparatus is most 
actively engaged in its legitimate work, communication with the 
bladder is shut off altogether. As has been well said, the urinary 
function of the penis is purely secondary. 

We have already seen how the original wrapping up together 
of matter and life takes place in the protoplasmic speck, the 
cell. "With this in mind we might almost anticipate the state- 
ment that in reproduction, when a new life is called into being, 
its very first beginning is found to be in the form of a minute 
protoplasmic-mass. This being the case, it follows logically, 



90 ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 

and is the fact as well, that this rare physical mechanism which 
enables us to exercise the privilege conferred upon us, is 
devoted to the production of this potent protoplasmic sub- 
stance, and its deposit where, in conjunction with the ovum, it 
may grow into a fully formed, new individual. The meana 
employed, and the methods by which the generative system 
accomplishes its work, constitute a fascinating study. I mean 
fascinating in the best sense of that word. As fascinating and 
as uplifting as we should expect the study of a pivotal point in 
the science of life to be. Not that we would indulge in any 
mushiness. One of the most healthful and honest mental 
traits with which we are endowed, is that repugnance which 
we feel toward all so-called "soft" people. You and I don't 
like those individuals who are so lacking in all true fibre, that 
no matter in what capacity we come in contact with them, we 
can run our fingers right into them anywhere, precisely as we 
used sometimes to run them into a rotten apple when we had 
gone to the barrel in the dark. You and I don't admire any 
such jellyfish masquerading as men and women, and I am veiy 
thankful that we don't. I very well know that just that appa- 
ratus and function which we have called honorable, has been the 
subject of every low jest, the outraged object of every witless 
profanation, the jeer of the degraded everywhere. But I also 
know that the more sacred a thing may be, the more capable it 
becomes of suffering violence at the hands of the vulgar, the 
profane, the degraded. That the most spotless is the most 
attractive target for those vandals who would besmirch and 
despoil. The simple confession that this is true, is vindication 
complete of the subject in hand. The possession of a manly 
vigor which is capable of giving new life to a coming genera- 
tion, out of its own abundant fulness, is a grand possession. 
Every physician knows that no man has a more painful sense of 
loss of estate, than he whom accident of devolopment, or dis- 
ease, has bereft of this function. But to return to our study. 



ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 91 

We find that the male reproductive organs are partly without, 
and partly within, the cavity of the pelvis. Or, if we overlook 
the purely technical distinction made between the cavity of the 
pelvis and the cavity of the abdomen, we may speak of these 
organs as being partly inside, and partly outside of the abdo- 
men. This double position is specially noticeable with regard 
to the scrotum and its contents. Within the scrotum are the 
two glands known as the testes. They are thus suspended out- 
side of the abdomen, while their ducts, which bear away the 
product of their work, pass inside. It is hard to understand 
why these delicate, exquisite glands were not given a place 
within the abdomen, with the greater protection which this 
would imply. One would think that room might have been 
made for them there. The abdomen is a marvel of close pack- 
ing, and adaptation to circumstances. Go into the dissecting 
room, and remove the contents of the abdominal cavity, and 
you will be unable to get them back. You cannot crowd them 
into the same space from which you just took them. You are 
not as good a packer as Dame Nature. And yet, to what fluct- 
uations are the contents of the abdomen subject. The stomach 
may contain a New England Thanksgiving dinner, or be noth- 
ing but a collapsed membrane ; the intestines may be filled 
with the products of digestion, or with gas, or with both, or be 
nothing but empty and flaccid tubes ; the rectum may be occu- 
pied or vacant ; the bladder may contain a pint at an ordinary 
filling, or be merely a folded sack ; while the diaphragm is 
encroaching from above with every respiration. It would seem 
that so accommodating a cavity could find room for these deli- 
cate glands. But they are denied this shelter, and suspended 
in their sac, without. Still, whatever the motive for the position 
assigned them, they are by no means neglected, but are royally 
cared for in their exposed situation. The sac of integument, 
called the scrotum, within which they are suspended, is given a 
power of contraction and expansion, by means of which an 



92 



ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 



Tunica Vaginalis 
Tunica Allwjin ta 
its Sept 



adaptability to changes in temperature is obtained. Its cavity 
is double, and each testis is wrapped up by itself in its various 
tunics, with a nicety which puts to shame the soft wrappings of 
the jeweller about some rare piece of his handiwork. 

Within these coverings we find the gland itself. Its weight 
is rather less than one ounce. The tunica albuginea forms its 
outer wall, being a white fibrous 
tissue, dense, inelastic, and about 
one twenty-fifth of an inch in thick- 
ness. From the inner surface of 
this investing membrane, numer- 
ous prolongations of its tissue pass 
into the substance of the gland, 
forming a system of internal divis- 
ion walls, which subdivide it into 
a great number of compartments. 
The number of these compartments 
in each testicle has been variously 
estimated at from two hundred and 
fifty to four hundred . These little 
cavities are for the lodgment of 
the seminiferous tubes, by which 
the seminal fluid, or male element 
of reproduction, is secreted. Each 

Vertical section of the Testicle, shewing 

of these compartments contains the Lobes aad Dacts - (Gray } 
from one to six of these tubes, so 

convoluted, and twisted upon themselves as to form a lobule. 
When untwisted and unravelled, the average length of each 
tube is found to be about twenty-five inches. The number of 
these tubes in each testicle is supposed to be about eight hun- 
dred and forty. Existing in such great number, and of such 
very considerable length, they must necessarily be quite minute, 
their diameter being from one one-hundred-and-fiftieth to one 
two-hundredth of an inch. They are lined with a mucous mem- 




ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 93 

brane containing certain peculiar cells which are the active 
instruments in the formation of the zo-osperms, the essential 
elements of the semen. Take it all in all, its framework of 
connective tissue, forming little workshops for the countless 
minute tubes; the testicle is a wonderful gland, and we have no 
choice but to recognize the exquisite workmanship displayed in 
the mechanism of this function of reproduction. As these 
multitudinous tubes travel outward from the gland; they 
coalesce with each other until they all are merged into some 
twenty canals, which, because of the straight course they take, are 
termed vasa recta. These in turn pass into a vertical, wedge- 
shaped, inward projection of the tunica albuginea (technically, 
the mediastinum), where they form a network, the rete testis. 
(Eete, a net. ) At the upper end of the mediastinum this net- 
work terminates in some twelve to twenty ducts which pass 
through the tunica albuginea, conveying the product of the 
testis to the epididymis. These ducts are called the vasa effer- 
entia. (Yas, a vessel.) The epididymis is made up of the 
globus major, globus minor, and body, and is nothing more 
than a mass of elaborately twisted tubing. The intricate 
convolutions of the vasa efferentia, which up to this point were 
straight, form the globus major. At the base of this forma- 
tion, the various ducts all become united in one, the convolu- 
tions and twistings of this one duct being sufficient to make up 
what are known as the body and globus minor. Some idea 
may be had of the complexity of the twisted arrangement of 
this tube, from the fact that when unravelled it measures some 
twenty feet. Yet the length of the undisturbed epididymis is 
little more than one inch. Becoming comparatively straight as 
it leaves the epididymis, of which it is a continuation, regarded 
from this point as the excretory duct of the testis, and receiving 
the name of vas deferens (literally, the vessel which carries 
away ), the tube passes up into the abdominal cavity through 
the inguinal canal (the same canal through which the intestine 



94 



ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 



makes its descent in the more common form of rupture), con- 
tinues downward and backward along the side of the bladder, 
arches downward and backward to its base, and enters the 
urethra from the under side, just in front of the bladder. 
Immediately before effecting this entrance into the urethra, it is 
joined by the duct of the seminal vesicle, the two becoming 
eontinuous. 

These seminal vesicles are two reservoirs, one for each side, 
placed at the base of the bladder for the purpose, in part at 
least, of affording storage for the semen ; though they also add 
a secretion of their own of more or less importance. Surround- 
ing that portion of the urethra into which the seminal ducts 
open, that is, the first inch of its progress from the bladder 
outward, is the prostate gland, which opens by numerous minute 
orifices into the urethra, the object of its secretion being, appar- 
ently, to furnish a vehicle for the semen. Finally, we find a pair 
of glands in front of the prostate, called Cowper's glands, which 
communicate with the urethra by two small openings. Their 
function is unimportant so far as known, and they are the outer 
most appendages of this labratory of life. 

The essential elements 
in the product of this lab- 
ratory, are the innumer- 
able, microscopic bodies, 
endowed with power of 
motion, termed spermato- 
zoids or zo-osperms. They 
may be easily seen in abun- 
dance, if a drop of semen 
be placed under an ordin- 
ary microscope ; except 
when there has been an 
over-drain of seminal fluid, 
when they may be found 
to be scanty in number 




Human Spermatozoids; magnified 800 dlameton. 
(Luschka. ) 



ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 



95 



and lacking in vigor, or altogether absent. They are anal- 
ogous to the pollen of the plant, and within them is lodged 
the power to fecundate the ovum, and inaugurate a new creation. 
They appear as minute beings in active motion, consisting of a 
flattened, oval head or body, with a long slender filament, or 
tail, attached. "The head is about one three-thousandth of an 
inch long, one eight-thousandth of an inch broad, and one 
twenty-five-thousandth of an inch in thickness. The tail is 
about one five-hundredth of an inch in length." Any one who 
has ever been a boy and seen a " polliwog," needs no descrip- 
tion of their movements. So active, so vigorous, so persistent, 
so remarkable are their powers of motion, that they were form- 
erly supposed to be animalcules possessed of an independent 
life of their own. But this opinion is now wholly supplanted 
by the more rational view that they are merely peculiar anatom- 
ical elements, possessed of power of motion, as is ciliated epi- 
thelium. Those who have seen the movements of either of 
these tissues, have seen a sight never to be forgotten ; paral- 
leled only by the capillary circulation as seen in the web of a 
frog's foot, or the circulation of the protoplasm in the plant. 

Yon Hammen, a German student, discovered these human 
spermatozoids in 1677. They are formed only in the testes, and 
the various secretions added to them as they pass outward, but 
minister to their necessities. These additions are numerous. 
"In the dilated portion of the vasa deferentia, the mucous 
glands secrete a fluid which is the first that is added to the 
spermatozoids as they come from the testicles. This fluid is 
brownish or grayish. It contains epithelium, and small, 
rounded granulations, which are dark and strongly refractive. 
The liquid itself is very slightly viscid. In the vesiculse semi- 
nales, there is a more abundant secretion of a grayish fluid, with 
epithelium, little colorless concretions of nitrogenized matter, 
called by Eobin sympexions, and a few leucocytes. The gland- 
ular structures of the prostate produce a creamy secretion, 



96 



ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 



which contains numerous fine granulations. It is chiefly to the 
admixture of this fluid that the semen owes its whitish appear- 
ance. Finally, as the semen is ejaculated, it receives the 
exceedingly viscid secretion of the glands of Cowper, a certain 
amount of stringy mucous from the follicles of the urethra,, 
with, perhaps, a little of the urethral epithelium." (Flint.) 
Acton observes on this point ; "The semen, however, as emit- 
ted, is not the semen as it is secreted in the testes. It may be 
said, while in the testes, to be in little more than a rudimentary 
state. When ejaculated it is a highly elaborated secretion. 
None, in fact, amongst the various secretions of the body seem 
to require so much time to mature. Not only have cells to be 
formed and thrown off, as in the case of other secretions, but, 
after they are liberated in the tubercles of the testis, nuclei 
have to divide, nucleoli to multiply, and each division of the 
nucleoli to become, through a gradual adolescence, an adult 
spermatozoon. When thus prepared it is passed down the 
spermatic cords to the vesiculae seminales." 

The vital fluid having been prepared in its well-appointed 
labratory, we next notice the provision made for its proper dis- 
charge in the reproductive act. For the accomplishment ot 
this purpose there is provided the penis, or male organ of copu- 
lation. In its quiescent state it is pendant and flaccid, and 
measures from two and one-half to four inches in length . But 





Fig. 1. Fig. 2. 

Transverse Section of Penh.— Fig. 1. Flaccid; Fig. 2. In Erection. No. 1. Dorsal Vein. •. 
Dorsal Artery. (There being two, one on either side of the Vein. ) 3 and 9 in Fig. 1. Corpora Cavernosa. 
3 in Fig. 2. The same in Erection. 4. Tunica Albuginea. 5. Integument. 6. Tunica Albugmea of Cor- 
pus Spongiosum. 7. Corpus Spongiosum. 8. Urethra. (CruveUhier. ) 



ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 97 

when under excitement, it becomes erect, firm, and enlarged, by 
an arrangement of its structure which admits of a very great 
influx of blood, confined within membranous walls. In this 
condition it measures from five to seven inches in length. The 
manner of construction which makes possible such remarkable 
changes in size and general appearance, may be easily compre- 
hended by aid of the annexed cuts. 

It is seen that in general make up, the penis is composed ot 
three rod-like bodies, the two corpora cavernosa, and the cor- 
pus spongiosum ; their relative position and size having been 
aptly compared to the barrels and ramrod of an ordinary gun. 
Each is surrounded by an encircling membrane of its own, the 
tunica albuginea (literally, the white coat), and all three are in 
turn included in the single sheath formed by the integument and 
subcutaneous tissue. The corpora cavernosa (the name 
explains itself), constitute the main body of the penis, and 
their membranous coats are so strong that, taken together, they 
are capable of supporting the entire weight of the body without 
giving way. They are placed side by side, forming the upper 
five-sixths of the substance of the penis. Their inner ends are 
attached to the bones of the pelvis. At their outer end they 
form a single rounded extremity, over which the glans penis, 
which is an expansion of the corpus spongiosum, fits like a 
cap. The corpus spongiosum is very much smaller than the 
bodies just described, lying between and under them, and 
enclosing in its substance the urethra. Its inner extremity is 
thickened into an enlargement known as the bulb, which lies 
just in front of, and between the attachment of the corpora cav- 
ernosa to the pelvic bones ; while at its free extremity it sud- 
denly expands into the rounded prominence called the glans 
penis, which is fitted over the united ends of the corpora caver- 
nosa. This glans (glans, an acorn), is in the form of an obtuse 
cone, presenting at its apex the orifice of the urethra, and at its 

(7) 



98 ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 

base the projecting ridge termed the corona glandis. It is ren- 
dered exquisitely sensitive by its profusion of nerves. In fact, 
" in respect to richness in nerves the glans yields to no other 
part of the economy, not even the organs of sense. ' ' 

" One important function of the corpus spongiosum is acquired 
through its bulb — namely, that of assisting in the expulsion of 
the last drops of urine or semen from the urethra. The pros 
tate, levator ani, and deep urethral muscles — especially the com- 
pressor urethrae — contract upon the fluid remaining in the canal 
after micturition, in that spasmodic effort called by the French 
the l coup de piston? This forces the last few drops beyond 
the bulb of the urethra. Now the middle fibres of the acceler- 
ator urinae — those which surround the bulb and adjacent por- 
tions of the corpus cavernosum — contract and forcibly drive the 
blood, which was contained in the areolae of the bulb, forward 
along the corpus spongiosum, forcibly distending that body, and 
thus bringing the walls of the urethra more closely into contact 
in a progressive wave. This helps to explain, as shown by A. 
Guerin, why the last few drops of urine do not escape promptly, 
but dribble away in cases of organic stricture of any severity ; 
for, with such a stricture, the areolae of the erectile tissue become 
more or less obliterated at the constricted point, and an 
obstacle is formed to the free passage of the wave of blood for- 
ward along the corpus spongiosum." * 

The power of erection possessed by the penis resides in the 
two corpora cavernosa, and the corpus spongiosum ; all three 
of these bodies being made up of what is known as erectile tis- 
sue. " Erectile tissue consists essentially of an intricate venous 
plexus, lodged in the interspaces between the trabeculae. (The 
numerous fibrous bands given off from the internal surface of 
the sheaths surrounding the corpora cavernosa and spongiosum, 
which, interlacing in every direction, form an intricate system 
of meshes, are given the name of trabeculae.) The veins form 
* Diseases of the Genito- Urinary Organs. Van Buren & Keyes. 



ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 99 

ing this plexus are so numerous, and communicate so freely 
with one another, as to present a cellular appearance when 
examined by means of a section ; their walls are extremely thin, 
and lined by squamous epithelium. The veins are smaller in 
the glans penis, corpus spongiosum, and circumference of the 
corpora cavernosa, than in the central part of the latter, where 
they are of large size, and much dilated. They return the 
blood by a series of vessels, some of which emerge in consid 
erable numbers from the base of the glans penis, and converge 
on the dorsum of the organ to form the dorsal vein ; others 
pass out on the upper surface of the corpora cavernosa, and 
join the dorsal vein; some emerge from the under surface of 
the corpora cavernosa, and, receiving branches from the corpus 
spongiosum, wind round the sides of the penis to terminate in 
the dorsal vein ; but the greater number pass out at the root of 
the penis, and join the prostatic plexus and pudendal veins." 
(Gray.) 

"In these parts (the corpora cavernosa and spongiosum), the 
arteries are large, contorted, provided with unusually thick 
muscular coats, and connected with the veins by vessels consid- 
erably larger than the true capillaries. They are supported by 
a strong fibrous net-work of trabecule, which contains non-stri- 
ated muscular fibres ; so that, when the blood-vessels are com- 
pletely filled, the organ becomes enlarged and hardened. 
Researches upon the nerves of erection show conclusively that 
the vessels of erectile tissues are distended by an enlargement 
of the arterioles of supply, and that there is not simply a 
stasis of blood produced by constriction of the veins, except, 
perhaps, for a short time, during the period of most intense 
venereal excitement. In experiments upon dogs, Eckhard dis- 
covered a nerve derived from the sacral plexus, stimulation of 
which produced an increase in the flow of blood through the 
penis, attended with all the phenomena of erection. This nerve 
arises by two roots at the sacral plexus, from the first to the 



100 ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 

third sacral nerves. In the experiments referred to, by a com- 
parison of the quantity of venous blood coming from the penis 
before and during the stimulation of the nerve, Eckhard found 
a great increase during erection . It is probable that, in addi- 
tion to the arterial dilatation, when the penis attains its max- 
imum of rigidity, there is a certain amount of obstruction to the 
outflow of blood, by compression of the veins, and that the 
rigidity is increased by contraction of the trabecular muscular 
fibres of the corpora cavernosa." (Flint.) 

"Dr. Newman holds, in regard to the mechanism of erection 
of the penis, that normal erection is under the influence of the 
nervous system. From the peripheral end, an independent 
origin is in the spinal nerves, and has been traced upwards into 
the cerebrum. Eckhard' s experiments on dogs are very instruc- 
tive, and prove the above. After dividing the spinal column 
above, he caused erection by applying electricity to the lumbar 
nerves. This proves that we have a middle center in the lum- 
bar plexus, which governs the erections in part. But as this 
lumbar plexus is again dependent on the nerve centers, we may 
say that erection begins in central organs in the cerebrum. If 
the spinal column could be divided, or a disease cause complete 
paralysis, the lumbar plexus would be paralyzed in such a degree 
that erection would be impossible. In Eckhard' s experiment, 
the electric power took, artificially, the place of the power of 
the nerve centers in the cerebrum, and thereby proves that, 
while we have an independent middle plexus of origin, in the 
spinal nerves, causing erections, the principal controlling center 
is in the cerebrum. Another center we find in the peripheral 
nerves of the genitals themselves, which also have an independ- 
ent action. This last center is the weakest of the three, but it 
exists. To recapitulate, we have three centers governing erec- 
tion : 1. Nerve centers in cerebrum (Psychical). 2. Lumbar 
plexus, presiding direct over erection. 3. Peripheric nerves of 
genitals. The mechanism of erection is not merely a reten- 



ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 101 

tion of venous blood, but more an afflux ot arterial blood into 
the elastic erectile tissue of the penis, which is well recognized 
by our modern physiologists. But this mechanism cannot be 
put in motion of itself, and is induced and governed by the 
power of the nervous system, as explained." * 

In the exercise of the reproductive function, Nature, econom- 
ical Nature, becomes prodigal. On the one side she lavishes 
nervous force without stint ; on the other she sends to the work 
the great life-current of the blood in close-pressed and urgent 
pulses. Just where the spermatic ducts open into the urethra 
is a longitudinal ridge, the veru montanum, which becomes dis- 
tended and shuts off all communication with the bladder, and 
leaves the reproductive passages complete, and free from the 
intrusion of any other function. Having gathered these life 
forces together in such force and tension, Nature expends that 
most expensive product — that which it costs her most to manu- 
facture — the seminal fluid. " Thus, on the one hand, the glans 
penis, endowed as it is with sensibility, and, on the other hand, 
the irritable muscular apparatus of the bulb, act and react upon 
one another as reciprocal exciting causes. The glans penis, 
when excited, reacts on the bulb, which sends more and more 
blood — the exciting material —towards it. Each new rush of 
blood to the glans exalts its sensibility ; the bulbo-cavernosus 
muscle, irritated in its turn, progressively accelerates its con 
tractions, in order to satisfy the requirements of the glans, 
which also increase more and more, till at last, by alternate 
actions, the entire apparatus reaches its highest point of excite- 
ment. At this moment a new series of secondary reflex phe- 
nomena is suddenly produced between the glans penis and the 
muscles which produce evacuation of the vesiculaB seminales, 
these muscles become excited, a spermatic ejaculation is pro- 
duced, and at this point the currents of exchange cease, the 
special function is accomplished, and the organ, as soon as 

* Medical Review. 



102 ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 

Nature has gained her end, returns to its ordinary state of 
repose and vegetative life." (Kobelt.) 

And not alone does the reproductive apparatus sink into 
repose. As the whole man feels a like sense of fatigue, 
whether the brain or the muscles have borne the brunt of his 
work, so the repose following the special exercise of this func- 
tion becomes the repose of the entire organism, and not of the 
reproductive system alone. It is curious to note the contradic- 
tory assertions of various writers on this point. One will 
remember the value of the product contributed, for one ounce 
of semen has been calculated to be the equivalent of forty 
ounces of blood ; remember that, undoubtedly, the construction 
and ejaculation of this secretion is the heaviest call made upon 
the vital forces ; remember the quiet sinking to rest of the 
individual after this exertion ; and set it down that exhaustion 
follows the exercise of this faculty. Another, having in mind 
the sense of satisfaction which pervades the body upon the suc- 
cessful accomplishment of any function, and the gratifying of 
any appetite ; the sense of contentment always accompanying 
the full completion of any vital task ; insists that it should be 
followed by a feeling of exhilaration. Both are right. The 
forces of the nervous system have been most actively engaged, 
and the exhaustion is that of successful effort, the exhilaration 
that of honestly earned fatigue. Longfellow pictures the same 
condition in another connection : — 

"Toiling, — rejoicing, — sorrowing, 
Onward through life he goes ; 
Each morning sees some task begin, 

Each evening sees it close ; 
Something attempted, something done, 
Has earned a night's repose." 
If these pages fall under the eye of any who feel that the 
exertion is overstated, or that the reaction is not estimated at 
its full force, let them bear in mind that we are speaking of the 
average man, not of individual exceptions which tend toward 



ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 103 

either extreme. And were the present generation relieved 
from that nervous overstrain which the present fast mode of 
life imposes upon it, there can be no question that the reaction 
of fatigue would grow more insignificant. While popular 
attention directed to the subject has begun the improvement of 
our physical status, yet it cannot be denied that we are suffering 
somewhat from race degeneration. "When men lived in 
houses of willow, they were of oak; and when they lived in 
houses of oak, they were of willow," says Bede. "I hold it 
to be morally impossible for God to have created, in the begin- 
ning, such men and women as we find the human race, in their 
physical condition, now to be. Examine the book of Genesis, 
which contains the earliest annals of the human family . As is 
commonly supposed, it comprises the first twenty-three hundred 
and sixty-nine years of human history. With childlike sim- 
plicity this book describes the infancy of mankind. Unlike 
modern histories, it details the minutest circumstances of social 
and indvidual life. Indeed, it is rather a series of biographies 
than a history. The false delicacy of modern times did not 
forbid the mention of whatever was done or suffered. And yet, 
over all that expanse of time — for more than one-third part of 
the duration of the human race — not a single instance is 
recorded of a child born blind, or deaf, or dumb, or idiotic, or 
malformed in any way ! During the whole period, not a single 
case of a natural death in infancy, or childhood, or early man- 
hood, or even of middle manhood, is to be found. The simple 
record is, ' and he died,' or he died 'in a good old age, and full 
of years, ' or he was ' old and full of days . ' No epidemic, or 
even endemic disease prevailed ; showing that they died the 
natural death of healthy men, and not the unnatural death of 
distempered ones. Through all this time (except in the single 
case of Jacob, in his old age, and then only a day or two before 
his death), it does not appear that any man was ill, or that any 
old lady or young lady ever fainted. Bodily pain from disease 



104 ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 

is nowhere mentioned." * To-day, the oculist to take care of 
our eyes, the dentist to take care of our teeth, the dermatolog- 
ist to take care of our skins, are necessities accepted without 
question. 

More than this, we are not satisfied that they repair damages 
merely, but we demand of them that they be teachers as well, 
for we have learned that it is needful that we know how to take 
care of these trusty servants of ours. And having noticed how 
the work is carried on by that department of our organism 
which furnishes the frail bark in which new life from the 
unseen is ferried over to these shores of time, that the fading 
life of this land of mortality may be reinforced from the realms 
of the immortal, — it is both natural and logical that we turn 
our attention to the consideration of such measures as may 
properly belong to the ordinary care of this function. 

Just as in the case of all other organs and functions, it will be 
seen that the care of this involves only what would be dictated 
by the simplest common sense. The suspension of the testes 
in the scrotum would present to any mechanic the suggestion 
that any loss of tone, without or within, would probably result 
in more or less external frictions, or internal sense of weight 
and pulling and uneasiness, as the depression of the vital elas- 
ticity would render these tissues more subject to the laws of 
inorganic mechanics, — and so it is. The same results may also 
be induced by extreme and unusual exercises and exertions, as 
for instance, the constant saddle exercise of the cavalryman, or 
heavy lifting by those whose muscular apparatus has not been 
gradually trained to the degree of endurance suddenly 
demanded of it. These difficulties, most serious to those called 
upon to endure them, are effectually remedied by a sensible 
device known as the suspensory bandage, which places about 
the scrotum an external artificial sac of netted silk, whose sup- 
port is exceedingly welcome, and brings with it no drawback 

* Horace Mann. 



*-*. 



ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 105 

whatever of inconvenience to wearer, or deleterious effect of any 
sort. It should also be remarked that no uneasiness need be 
felt if it be noticed that the left testis hangs a little lower than 
the right . It is almost invariably so ; common sense dictates 
that it should be so from the mechanical influences surrounding 
them ; for the liability to inconvenience and injury would be 
greatly enhanced were they suspended exactly side by side. 
Speaking of this inequality of suspension, the noted English 
surgeon, Sir Benjamin C. Brodie, observes that 'fit would be 
very inconvenient if it were otherwise." 

Passing now to the other masculine appendage, let us notice, 
first, what is a frequent source of anxiety, and put the statement 
clearly that there is absolutely no proportion existing between 
size, and efficiency or ability to perform this function. The 
athletes of olden time, who fixed the standard for the world in 
matters of physical perfection, we find to have possessed, at this 
point, symmetry combined with less than average size. So 
that those who have been troubled with the misgiving that they 
were the victims of arrested development, or diminishing size, 
may well cast to the winds all their fears ; for any difficulty 
from this cause is unknown to medicine. It may seem to be an 
unimportant matter, hardly deserving of notice, yet it has been 
the real cause of so much disquietude, that it is at once worth 
while to consider it, and pleasant to be able to speak positively. 

In our study of the anatomy of the apparatus, no mention was 
made of that sheath of integument which, extending forward, 
covers and protects the sensitive glans and its profusion of 
nerves. It is technically known as the prepuce . It is of great 
interest to us, for the reason that, directly and indirectly, it is 
the cause of more derangement and over-excitement, and is 
more frequently subject to a mistaken development than any 
other part of the apparatus. Why it should be so prone to set 
up an abnormal nervous irritation, is soon understood. The 
mucous membrane lining the prepuce, and that forming the 



106 ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 

outer surface of the glans, lie in contact with each other. Two 
mucous surfaces placed in constant and uninterrupted contact 
with one another, become very much thinned, very delicate, 
and extremely sensitive. Beside this, there is deposited 
between the surface of the glans, and the mucous lining of the 
prepuce, a cheesy secretion, called smegma. This, if allowed 
to accumulate, becomes an added source of irritation to these 
over-sensitive membranes. Thus these two conditions tending 
to produce an abnormal state of affairs at a point alive with 
nerves, react upon each other, to produce the greatest possible 
disturbance. The excited mucous membrane is readily affected 
by the presence of a foreign body, which the smegma is, in 
effect; and losing its healthful tone, its secretions become 
vitiated, and are thus more irritating than before. The remedy 
for this undesirable condition of things, is found in proper 
attention to cleanliness. The prepuce should be drawn back, 
and the surfaces cleansed, with water, from this smegma. This 
cleansing should be considered as much a matter of course, as 
the cleaning of one's finger nails. The failure to attend to 
this is the rule rather than the exception, because of ignorance 
of the propriety and necessity of any such procedure. 

The result of this oversight is found in many an unpleasant 
local irritation and inflammation, and in many annoying and 
enervating abnormal excitements of the whole apparatus. And 
these may, in turn, be reflected upon the general nervous sys- 
tem, producing derangements of the general health which seem 
almost incredible to those who have not been brought into fre- 
quent contact with them . To properly accomplish this cleans- 
ing, it is necessary that the prepuce be drawn, with reasonable 
facility, back of the elevated ridge at the base of the glans. 
The number of cases in which the prepuce is so long, and its 
orifice so constricted, as to render this a matter of difficulty, or 
altogether impossible, is a constant surprise to the physician. 
This condition is technically known as phimosis. It is, there- 



ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 107 

fore, under the head of phimosis that we find record of the ill 
consequences attending neglect of this obscure cranny of the 
body. Dr. Lewis A. Sayre, of New York, has repeatedly pointed 
out that club-foot (set up by muscular contraction of the lower 
extremities from reflex nervous irritation), paralysis, relaxation 
of the muscles of the back with curvature of the spine, and other 
nervous disorders result from this condition. " There is now no 
doubt that many cases of muscular inco-ordination, spasm and 
paresis are due to phimosis, as are also occasionally various 
other disturbances of the nervous system, such as amblyopia, 
hysteria, hypochondriasis, etc. Hernia is not uncommon as a 
result of congenital phimosis. Out of fifty such cases selected 
at random, Mr. Kempe found that in thirty-one there was rup- 
ture."* " Prolapsus ani not unfrequently accompanies phim- 
osis in children when the prepuce becomes inflamed, and symp- 
toms resembling those of stone in the bladder are not uncom- 
mon from the same cause." f "The constitutional symptoms 
which are developed by this peculiar disorder are numerous, and 
are often overlooked. They are all affections of the nervous sys- 
tem, and vary in intensity from ordinary sleeplessness and nerv- 
ous jactitations, to complete inco-ordination of movements and 
loss of equilibrating power. Sometimes the affections simulate 
hip disease, sometimes locomotor ataxia is present. I insert here 
a typical and interesting case as exhibiting to what degree these 
symptoms may be present. It was that of a bright lad of seven 
years, who for several months before coming under observation 
had been losing strength, appetite, and flesh, and was restless 
and i nervous,' and took but little notice of anything. Loco- 
motor ataxia was a marked symptom : cannot co-ordinate his 
members in any act ; could not walk across the room without 
staggering and pitching headlong. The same want of co-ordin- 
ation was manifested when he attempted to feed himself; he 

* J. William White. Holmes's System of Surgery. 
f Genito-Urinary Diseases. Van Buren & Keyes. 



108 ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 

made bad work of it, and was soon forced to give it up. It 
seemed impossible for the will to guide the hand to the mouth. 
Intellect not disturbed, only the hebetude before mentioned was 
marked. Responded to questions in monosyllables, and speech 
was not very distinct. Pupils widely dilated ; at times an out- 
ward and slightly upward squint of both eyeballs, from paresis, 
as was supposed, of the third pair of nerves. Marked dullness 
of hearing. No febrile heat ; pulse normal. No pains com- 
plained of. Could not elicit from him whether he experienced 
any abnormal sensations on attempting to put his feet on the 
floor, or whether the tactile or muscular sense was perverted. 
Hyperesthesia of general surface. Shortly after coming under 
treatment he had a severe fit of epileptiform type. There was 
no constipation or difficulty of micturition, 

"For upwards of a week he was treated with nervous seda- 
tives with a view to quiet the excessive nervous irritability man- 
fested during the night, with only partial benefit, as his general 
condition did not improve. One day, at an early morning 
visit, the patient lay naked in his mother's arms, when a glance 
revealed phimosis, the prepuce was greatly elongated, strangu- 
lating the glans, and the urinary punctum was minute. Circum- 
cision was performed, and from that time steady improvement 
set in, and complete recovery soon followed. Dr. John 
Thompson, of Albany, records a case of epileptiform convul- 
sions produced by phimosis, and I have frequently relieved 
intense nervousness, jactitations, and vomiting by circum- 
cision." * A case of epilepsy having its cause in phimosis and 
its cure in circumcision, is fresh in the mind of the writer, hav- 
ing recently come under his personal observation. "With 
regard to the more remote effects of congenital phimosis, some 
doubts might be legitimately entertained, were it not for the 
circumstantial report of the symptoms, and the fact that simple 

♦Svstem of Surgery. Helmuth. 



ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 109 

excision of the elongated prepuce has in many cases brought 
complete and permanent relief. 

u Within the last few years additional cases of the remote 
effects of congenital phimosis and of a small meatus urinarius 
have been reported by Drs. Sayre, Moses, Otis, Green, Brown, 
Sequard, and others. These cases have been ably summed up, 
and others added, in a report from the Surgical Section to the 
New York Academy of Medicine, by Dr. Yale, who says : 
'The forms of nervous disturbance observed in these cases, so 
far as I have ascertained, have been, notably, inco ordination 
of muscular movements, including those necessary to speech, 
less commonly spasm or spastic contraction, and paresis, gen- 
erally of the lower extremities. I find no case of paralysis of 
sensation, but hyperesthesia is often mentioned. Several cases 
of amblyopia have been published. A mental condition resem- 
bling hysteria or hypochondriasis is a frequent element in the 
clinical histories. ' 

1 ' Yerneuil reports a very interesting case in which careful 
microscopic examination of the excised prepuce showed that 
the terminal plexus of nerves had become hypertrophied, and 
in which the nervous symptoms were thus fully accounted for. ' ' * 

As has already been indicated, in all those cases where the 
existence of phimosis in greater or less degree interferes with 
habits of cleanliness, and exposes the system at large to possi- 
bilities of disaster, the rite of circumcision, a most excellent 
sanitary measure practiced by many nations, past and present, 
is by all means advisable. It is not in any sense a formidable 
operation. It consists merely in the removal of the redundant 
and constricted extremity of this tegumentary envelope. It is 
a more necessary procedure in the warmer climates for obvi- 
ous reasons, and it will be found that those nations practicing 
circumcision as a sanitary regulation are those which occupy 
the warmer latitudes. But under the conditions specified it 
*Tlie Venereal Diseases. Bumstead & Taylor. 



110 ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 

becomes a necessary and beneficent operation in our own coun- 
try and climate. An incidental benefit, by no means insignifi- 
cant, attending this removal of the smegma and washing of the 
surfaces, is procured in the obviation of that undue thinning 
and sensitiveness engendered by the long and uninterrupted 
contact of two mucous surfaces. For all these reasons don't 
forget to keep this out-of-the-way nook of the body clean ; take 
as much pride in so doing as you do in keeping all other sur- 
faces clean ; and if there be any mechanical obstacle in the 
way, get your family physician to remove it. 

With the exercise of proper care over this reproductive appa- 
ratus, as pointed out above, and which is certainly not dispro- 
portionate to that which we bestow upon other functions ; with 
some useful pursuit which shall give us that indispensible occu- 
pation which we must have or be eaten out with the corrupt 
corrosion of idleness ; and with a proper care for that physical 
balance of the whole man which is the prime requisite for suc- 
cess in any and all departments of human industry ; there will 
be little danger of more than a rarely recurring discharge of 
the seminal fluid during the unconscious hours of the night, an 
accident which has been the dread and terror of so many thous- 
ands of young men. 

The subject is a large and most important one, and is consid- 
ered at length elsewhere, but the present chapter would be 
incomplete without its mention. It is sufficient to say in this 
connection, without going deeply into the subject, that while 
frequent losses of this kind are disastrous, yet the young, 
unmarried man may expect them at considerable intervals ; and 
so occurring they are perfectly physiological and normal. 
There will be the gradual filling up of the reservoirs, and there 
must come the emptying ; but if the energies be absorbed in 
proper pursuits, and all causes of local irritation and stimula- 
tion be avoided, the activities, the powers of this creative sys- 
tem will lie dormant to such an extent that the filling of the 



ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 1 11 

receptacles will be exceedingly slow, and the emptying corres- 
pondingly rare, — the vital energies being absorbed in other 
directions ; and no depression or exhaustion, mental or phys 
ical, will be noticed as a result of such occasional emission. 

Finally, let me impress upon you the importance of the bath. 
It may seem an altogether superfluous piece of work to urge 
this matter in these days of enlightenment, household conven- 
iences, hot and cold water and bath-tubs. But the fact is that 
the popular carelessness regarding bathing is a thing phenom- 
enal. It is but a short time since that a business man of good 
standing remarked, with the air of one who does his whole 
duty, u Oh, yes, I bathe about once every six months ! " Beside, 
I fancy there are more who have not the incitement of the bath- 
tub in the house, than there are of those who have. Be that 
as it may, let those without the bath-tubs take heart, for there 
is something better for them, and let those who have the bath- 
tubs use them all they wish, but add to them something better, 
and let the favored and unfavored alike provide themselves 
with a good large bath sponge, and every night on retiring take 
a sponge bath of moderately cool water from head to foot ; and 
I am sure that they will find themselves cleaner and fresher 
and fuller of self-respect than ever before. I say cleaner, 
because a man who uses this bath every night will be cleaner 
than if he use the full bath in the tub every other night, and I 
know of none who use the tub oftener than that. I say fuller 
of self-respect, because he who is careless of personal cleanli- 
ness carries about with him an unconfessed sense of degrada- 
tion which inevitably prevents his being a man among men to 
the full of his capacity, whether he be conscious of it or not, 
just as the atmosphere presses upon him with a weight of fif- 
teen pounds to the square inch, and does not abate that pres- 
sure a single ounce merely because he may be unconscious of it. 
And if any one chance to read these lines who has never awak- 
ened to this truth, I beseech him to try the efficacy of clean 



112 ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 

water as a conferer of knighthood. 1 am sure that from the 
depth of his increased sense of manliness he will bless the day 
when he made the experiment. Truly, cleanliness is next to 
godliness. 

But this excursus on the subject of the bath is not a digression 
merely, nor merely because that with the cleansing of the 
entire skin will come the cleansing of the integument of a par- 
ticular region, as the greater includes the less. The general 
daily bath on retiring is important because over-excitement of the 
reproductive system is caused by just two things. That is, the 
immediate causes are just two. And the first of these is ner- 
vous irritation, both at the nerve centers, and the terminal ram- 
ifications; and the second is a determination of blood to this 
region. Now the bath at retiring calls the blood away from its 
work of stimulating the central machinery, takes it away from 
the nerve centers, distributes it equally over the sixteen square feet 
of surface belonging to the average adult, and thus allows the 
nerve centers to sink into repose. For blood is to the nerve 
centers what fire is to gunpowder, and the nerve centers in the 
enjoyment of restful quiet are not going to send an uncalled for 
deluge of blood to the reproductive apparatus. I know that the 
conviction is deeply rooted that it is damaging to take a bath at 
night, because it is supposed to be incompatible with fatigue, 
and I know that the morning has been as persistently lauded as 
the proper time. Yet who that will stop to remember that the 
whole theory of the bath is supposed to lie in the one word 
"reaction;" that the vital forces are at their lowest ebb in the 
morning; that then the temperature of the body is at its lowest, 
that it is difficult to resist the temptation to prolong all sorts of 
work and play far into the evening, because ones entire machin- 
ery seems then to be running at its smoothest and best; — who 
will fail to set the old idea down as a mistaken one ? It 
is a slovenly way of living to go to one's room at night, and 
with cold feet, and excited head, and skin bearing upon its sur- 



ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 113 

face the debris of the day's tissue- waste, tumble into bed to 
sleep uneasily, to dream and waken, the victim of morbid 
excitements of all sorts, which render the hours of repose a 
nightmare. It is to lose the precious hours of God-given 
sleep, the only elixir of life in the universe which can render 
restitution to the nervous system for the drafts made upon it during 
the day. Shall we not rather, by means of the bath, call the 
blood current from the rapidly running mill of life, to the sur- 
face, and the quiet distribution of the excited torrent which this 
surface call implies. Then shall the wheels of life move slowly 
and yet more slowly as we sink into the restful oblivion of child- 
hood's sleep; with no dream save perchance the misty vision of 
the guardian angel hovering over our couch. Through the 
ministry of this celestial rest we shall learn, all unconsciously, 
the lesson of the night's uplifting. Before we have even 
guessed that "wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars," the 
stilly night has come, a winged messenger, bearing to us oui 
supremest inspiration. 

" I heard the trailing garments of the Night 
Sweep through her marble halls 1 
I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light 
From the celestial walls ! 

" I felt her presence, by its spell of might, 
Stoop o'er me from above; 
The calm, majestic presence of the Night, 
As of the one I love. 

" I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight, 
The manifold, soft chimes, 
That fill the haunted chambers of the Night, 
Like some old poet's ryhmes. 

" From the cool cisterns of the midnight air 
My spirit drank repose; 
The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,— 
From those deep cisterns flows. 

(8) 



114: ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 

" O holy Night ! from thee I learn to bear 
What man has borne before ! 
Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care, 
And they complain no more. 

" Peacel Peacel Orestes-like I breathe this prayer! 
Descend with broad-winged flight, 
The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair, 
The best-beloved Nightl" 



Longfellow. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

I take my watch from my pocket and open the outer and 
inner cases and expose the movement. I follow the imprisoned 
power from the coiled main-spring, through wheel and pinion, 
and wheel and pinion, until I come to that polished and toothed 
whee] which, by means of lever and hair-spring, makes its tire- 
less turns back and forth with unflagging vigor. Stop that 
wheel and the watch might be an ordinary lump of metal so far 
as any manifestation of power or movement would tell you the 
contrary. Stopping that wheel has stopped the whole watch. 
Having made stationery that one delicate staff, every pinion is 
motionless. Again, take this one wheel from the watch, say, if 
you will that you will not have it in the way, and the main 
spring finds itself suddenly released from all irksome control, 
and unwinds itself with all speed, while the wheels spin round 
furiously, their rapid running accomplishing no useful purpose; 
and in a few seconds the watch lies spent and useless with all its 
hours of work ahead of it. I ask my watch-maker, Mr. Dick- 
erson, what he calls this curious wheel which stands between 
stoppage from obstruction on the one hand, and stoppage from 
the dissipation of power on the other; and he tells me it is the 
"balance." 

I step round to the grain elevator to ask my friend, Deacon 
Hough, his opinion as to the probable prices of grain a month 
hence; and I find him with a countenance so disturbed as to be 
almost undeacon-like» and when I ask him what is the matter, 
he says that some one has been meddling with his scales, and he 
finds that they are "out of balance." And having had a good 



116 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

old fashioned " pious training, " which has left my memory, like a 
polka-dot calico, studded over with'such definite propositions as 
"Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever," — 
the rows one way corresponding to the Sundays, and the other to 
the succeeding years, — I at once begin to indulge certain very 
apt observations as to which is most out of balance, the scales 
or the Deacon, and walk up town feeling very satisfied with the 
Deacon indeed, because he has furnished me the material for 
such edifying meditations. 

As I pass up the street I run across Charles Ashburner* 
Charles and I used to wrestle together with "vulgar fractions " 
in the little country school-house; but now he has just come t 
the city and opened a large retail house, and he wants me to 
come in and see how well he is doing. So I follow him in, and 
he picks up from his desk and hands me a formidable looking 
sheet with long parallel rulings and columns of figures. At 
the top I read "Trial Balance, August 1st," and I begin to 
fear that this subject of balances is going to be too much tor me, 
uo matter how well I may be grounded in the Shorter Catechism. 
And so it proves. The morning paper on its commercial page 
speaks in loud head lines of import and export, and the 
"balance of trade." On the political page Mr. Conkling talks 
of the "balance of power," and again the temptation to 
moral reflections comes upon me with irresistible force. I go 
home via the water-works, for the steady calm with which the 
great engine performs its mighty task is the best restorer 
of equinimity I know for a mind that has grown hot and rest- 
less under the friction of its daily task. Yet even here the 
" governor " and fly-wheel seem to have that irrepressible " bal- 
ance" written all over them. 

But whatever conceits we may indulge about that quality 
we call balance, and however universal its reign may be, from 
the molecule of the paving stone under our feet, to the stars 
above our heads, just now our concern is with the balance of the 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 117 

forces which go to make up the perfect and complete man. 
And even here we shall make no attempt to follow out the sub- 
divisions of the theme, such as the balance of waste and 
repair in the function of nutrition. Looking at the subject 
in its more comprehensive aspects we note, first, the intellectual 
balance, second, the physical balance, and third, the reactions 
which the mental and physical exert upon each other. With the 
first, the intellectual balance, by itself considered, we have 
nothing to do in the present discussion. But the second, the 
physical balance, is at once the key and contents of our study ; 
and with the third, the mutual influence of the intellectual and 
physical upon each other, form a topic of paramount importance. 
Notice, too, that the influence of the physical state upon the 
mental is of much greater importance than that of the mental 
upon the physical — not alone because of absolute relative quan- 
tity or intensity, but because the physical almost invariably 
takes the initiative, the mental having apparently learned that 
most difficult of boyhood's lessons, " not to speak until spoken 
to;" but failing perhaps to learn as well that other lesson, not 
to " strike back." The mental does "strike back" at the 
physical, but the physical strikes first, and so we shall turn our 
whole attention to the physical and its effect upon the mental. 
The first thing for us to do is to look the facts squarely in the 
face, and make honest acknowledgment that we have lost our 
physical balance, with exceptions so rare as to be unworthy of 
mention. The fact that a physician in any town, large or 
small, may say of every man and woman he meets on the street, 
that he or she has either just been under the care of a doctor, 
or is under his care, or will be within three months, or ought 
so to be, and be correct in this assertion ninety-nine times out 
of a hundred, is testimony sufficient to justify the indictment. 
Why have we lost our physical balance ? Never was a nation 
better clothed, never was a nation better fed, never was a 
nation better housed. We, as a people, excel in our knowledge 



118 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

of physiology, and hygiene is a household word: We under- 
stand the laws of health, and are particular about our food and 
clothing, and the warming and ventilation of our homes, — and 
yet we are not well, and we cannot understand the reason why 
this is so. We get the best doctor we can, and give up the 
problem as unsolvable. What is the matter ? 

Our idea of the proper sphere of the doctor is a great mis- 
take. Listen to our own beloved poet, Longfellow, as he sings 
of health. As we listen to the song we catch the words of the 
refrain, and they are these, — 

"Joy and Temperance and Repose 
Slam the door on the doctor's nose!" 

Is he right? Yes, he is right in spirit, but wrong in phrase. 
He meant to sing that joy and temperance and repose slam the 
door on all health's foes— slam the door on the doctor's dose, 
and relieve him from the unwelcome necessity of asking his 
friends to swallow drugs. Away with this antiquated idea that 
the doctor's chief duty is to make people well after they have 
gotten sick. What! is a machinist chiefly one who replaces 
broken piston rods and damaged bearings ? Is he chiefly and 
essentially a repairer ? The manufacture of steam engines is 
made a successful industry only by the demand for them. Is 
that demand best sustained by putting the noble machinery into 
the hands of incompetent engineers that it may speedily become 
broken and useless ? So is it the doctor's first and chief work 
to keep people well, to guard them from the possible and 
probable attacks of disease, to be the conservator of health, 
and incidentally, to do what lies in his power for the sick. 

The hearty acceptance of this evidently correct estimate of 
the doctor's calling, should be insisted upon. They are prima 
rily not pathologists, but sanitarians. They are first teachers, — 
teachers, expounders, interpreters of the laws of health ; and only 
after that prescribe rs of medicines. " There is, indeed," says 
Huxley, " a popular superstition, that doctors know all about 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 119 

things that are queer or nasty to the general mind ; " and only 
incidentally take cognizance of the pure, sweet things of health. 
More just is the conception of Bacon. " The human organiza- 
tion, so delicate and so varied, is like a musical instrument of 
complicated and exquisite workmanship, and easily loses its 
harmony. Thus it is with much reason that the poets unite in 
Apollo the arts of music and of medicine, perceiving that the 
genius of the two arts is almost identical, and that the proper 
office of the physician consists in tuning and touching in such a 
manner the lyre of the human body as that it shall give forth 
only sweet and harmonious sounds. " 

Were this not true, I should be playing traitor to my profes- 
sion, and doing what little I could to injure the business of 
every brother physician in the land. For I want to say some- 
thing which shall help you to keep your health and multiply 
your strength. I want to show you that instead of a headachey, 
rickety, friction-consumed brain, you may have an intellect that 
shall be like the buttressed wall of a cathedral, equal to any 
strain that may come upon it, and bearing easily the weight of 
work which the days and weeks and months and years must 
inevitably bring. And I want to show you that a brain of mar- 
vellous power belongs in a physical frame which shall be its appro- 
priate complement. That while you may have no use for the 
meaty muscle of the blacksmith, yet still you can and should 
have sinews of steel. That this brain of stable equilibrium 
must be tenanted in a physical house which hath foundations. 
That mental equipoise and physical equilibrium are not at war, 
but mutually necessary to each other. That it is mental and 
physical, not mental versus physical. That "no man is in true 
health who cannot stand in the free air of heaven, with his feet 
on God's free turf, and thank his Creator for the simple luxury 
of physical existence." That in this symmetrical training of 
body and mind is found the very best preparation for every 
possible exigency of mental and physical circumstance. When 



120 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

Archibald Maclaren, of the University Gymnasium, Oxford, 
asked the African explorer, Captain Burton, what training he 
adopted to prepare himself for the hardships he was about to 
undergo, his answer was, "The best training for work in 
Africa is, I find, to take the best care of myself that I can while 
at home." "Torn Brown told the writer that, when in Parlia 
ment, he could work through a whole week together on but 
four hours of sleep a night, and be none the worse for it, pro- 
vided he could have all he wanted the next week, and that 
since he was twenty -five he had hardly known a sick day." 

It being freshly emphasized in our minds that the doctor's 
normal work is as Hygeia's prime minister, not as a policeman 
•detailed to shadow disease ; that all physicians are, by author- 
ity of their profession, teachers, it will hardly seem an imper- 
tinence to question, a little, our educational system . What are 
our colleges and universities thinking about, that they have no 
chair which shall teach our sons and daughters the laws of 
health and their own being ; no chair which shall point out the 
practical methods of keeping at the point of one's greatest work 
capacity ? 

I do not forget that in many of them some hard-worked resi- 
dent physician is invited to give a few lectures on semi-medical 
topics, which, from the college side, look ornamental in the 
catalogues and announcements, and from the doctor's side are 
an unimportant addendum to his real work, and from the stu- 
dent's side are ciphers as to anything learned which shall be of 
practical value. I do not forget these harmless little amuse- 
ments, but they are no answer to my question. Do our col- 
leges teach Greek by a few lectures from the best known pas- 
tor of the town % Do they teach Latin by a few lectures from a 
superannuated clergyman ? Do they teach mathematics by a 
short course of lectures from the most competent bank account- 
ant % In the words of James A. Garfield: " What are our 
seminaries and colleges accomplishing in the way of teaching 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 121 

the laws of life and physical well-being? I should scarcely 
wrong them, were I to answer, Nothing : absolutely nothing. 
The few recitations which some of the colleges require in anat- 
omy and physiology, unfold but the alphabet of those subjects. 
The emphasis of college culture does not fall there. The grad- 
uate has learned the Latin of the old maxim, ' Mens sana in 
corpore sano ; ' but how to strengthen the mind by the preser- 
vation of the body, he has never learned. He can read you in 
Xenophon's best Attic Greek, that Apollo flayed the unhappy 
Marsyas, and hanged up his skin as a trophy ; but he has never 
examined the wonderful texture of his own skin, or the laws 
by which he may preserve it . He would blush, were he to 
mistake the place of a Greek accent, or put the ictus on the 
second syllable of Eolus ; but the whole circle ' Liberalium 
ArtiumJ so pompously referred to in his diploma of gradua- 
tion, may not have taught him, as I can testify in an instance 
personally known to me, whether the jejunum is a bone, or the 
humerus an intestine. Every hour of study consumes a por- 
tion of his muscular and vital force. Every tissue of his body 
requires its appropriate nourishment, the elements of which are 
found in abundance in the various products of nature ; but he 
has never inquired where he shall find the phosphates and car- 
bonates of lime for his bones, albumen and fibrine for his blood, 
and phosphorus for his brain. His chemistry, mineralogy, 
botany, anatomy, and physiology, if thoroughly studied, would 
give all this knowledge ; but he has been intent on things 
remote and foreign, and has given but little heed to those mat- 
ters which so nearly concern the chief functions of life. But 
the student should not be blamed. The great men of history 
have set him the example. Copernicus discovered and an- 
nounced the true theory of the solar system a hundred years 
before the circulation of the blood was known. Though from 
the heart to the surface, and from the surface back to the heart, 
of every man of the race, some twenty pounds of blood had 



122 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

made the circuit once every three minutes, yet men were look- 
ing so steadily away from themselves that they did not observe 
the wonderful fact. His habit of thought has developed itself 
in all the courses of college study. " Again, asking the ques- 
tion, "What kinds of knowledge should be the objects of a lib- 
eral education?" he makes answer: "First, That knowl- 
edge which is necessary for the full development of our bodies 
and the preservation of our health. " "I am certain," writes 
Horace Mann, " I could have performed twice the labor, both 
better and with greater ease to myself, had I known as much of 
the laws of health and life at twenty-one as 1 do now. In col- 
lege I was taught all about the motions of the planets, as care- 
fully as though they would have been in danger of getting off 
the track if I had not known how to trace their orbits ; but 
about my own organization, and the conditions indispensable to 
the healthful functions of my own body, I was left in profound 
ignorance. Nothing could be more preposterous. I ought to 
have begun at home, and taken the stars when it should come 
their turn. The consequence was, I broke down at the begin- 
ning of my second college year, and have never had a well day 
since. Whatever labor I have since been able to do, I have 
done it all on credit instead of capital, — a most ruinous way, 
either in regard to health or money. For the last twenty-five 
years, so far as it regards health, I have been put, from day to 
day, on my good behavior; and during the whole of this 
period, as an Hibernian would say, if I had lived as other folks 
do for a month, I should have died in a fortnight." 

It may be objected that to give such prominence to the phys- 
ical in education would be to run counter to the traditions of 
our colleges, and their reverence for the established order of 
things, and the belongings of antiquity. But in so doing they 
would have the endorsement of their most revered oracles. 
With the Greeks, education meant symmetrical development, 
physical and mental. They ' \ made the education of their 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 123 

children of both sexes an affair of state — it was done at the 
public expense. In this way they became the type of the 
human race in its best characteristics. In form they were all 
but perfect; in courage unequalled ; they excelled in the arts 
and sciences ; in polite literature, in poetry and history, they 
are still our masters. Their theory of education, and the prac- 
tical results of it, were better than ours at this day." Plato 
declares : " A good education is that which assures to the body 
all the beauty, all the perfection, of which it is capable. To 
secure this beauty, it is only necessary that the body should be 
developed, with perfect symmetry, from the earliest infancy. 
The first stages of development are always most controlling and 
most enduring. If the exercise does not keep pace with the 
growth of the body, it becomes subject to I know not how 
many infirmities. " Goethe asserts that "The best plan of edu- 
cation is that of the Hydriotes, the Greek trading-sailors, who 
take their infant boys out to sea and let them sport around 
amid oakum and belaying-pins before they learn to handle them 
with a business purpose. Such a school has graduated the 
heroes who, with their own hands, could grapple the fire-boat 
to the flag-ship of the enemy." Even the Chinese "regard the 
Cong Fou (a system of physical exercise), as a true exercise of 
religion, which, by curing the body of its infirmities, liberates 
the soul from the servitude of the senses, and gives it power of 
accomplishing its wishes on earth, and of freely elevating itself 
to the perfection and perpetuity of its spiritual nature in the 
Taoy the realm of the great creative Power." Our colleges 
lack neither precedent nor precept, the most illustrious of mod- 
ern and ancient times, insisting upon the necessity for, and util- 
ity of physical education. 

It may be objected that too much importance is attached to 
this matter by those whose daily duties have to do with the care 
of the physical man. This is the objection of a doctrinaire, 
not of an active man of affairs. Charles Sumner wrote from 



124 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

Aix; "It is with a pang unspeakable that I find myself thus 
arrested in the labors of life, and in the duties of my position. 
This is harder to bear than the fire." "If any one doubts the 
importance of an acquaintance with the fundamental principles 
of physiology as a means to complete living, let him look 
around and see how many men and women he can find in 
middle or later life who are thoroughly well. Occasionally only 
do we meet with an example of vigorous health continued 
to old age; hourly do we meet with examples of acute disorder, 
chronic ailment, general debility, premature decrepitude. 
Scarcely is there one to whom you put the question, who has 
not, in the course of his life, brought upon himself illnesses which 
a little knowledge would have saved him from. Here is a case 
of heart disease consequent on a rheumatic fever that followed 
reckless exposure. There is a case of eyes spoiled for life by 
over study. Yesterday the account was of one whose long-en- 
during lameness was brought on by continuing, spite of the 
pain, to use a knee after it had been slightly injured. And 
to-day we are told of another who has had to lie by for years, 
because he did not know that the palpitation he suffered from 
resulted from an overtaxed brain. Now we hear of an irremedia- 
ble injury that followed some silly feat of strength; and, again, of a 
constitution that has never recovered from the effects of excessive 
work needlessly undertaken . While on all sides we see the per- 
petual minor ailments which accompany feebleness. Not to 
dwell on the natural pain, the weariness, the gloom, the waste 
of time and money thus entailed, only consider how greatly ill- 
health hinders the discharge of all duties — makes business 
often impossible, and always more difficult; produces an irrita- 
bility fatal to the right management of children; puts the func- 
tions of citizenship out of the question; and makes amusement 
a bore . Is it not clear that the physical sins — partly our fore- 
father's and partly our own — which produce this ill-health, 
deduct more from complete living than anything else ? and to a 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 125 

great extent make life a failure and a burden instead of a bene- 
faction and a pleasure ? 

"To all which add the fact, that life, besides being thus im- 
mensely deteriorated, is also cut short . It is not true, as we com- 
monly suppose, that a disorder or disease from which we have 
recovered leaves us as before. ~No disturbance of the normal 
course of the functions can pass away and leave things exactly 
as they were. In all cases a permanent damage is done — not 
immediately appreciable, it may be, but still there; and along 
with other such items which Nature in her strict account-keeping 
never drops, will tell against us to the inevitable shortening of 
our days. Through the accumulation of small injuries it is that 
constitutions are commonly undermined, and break down, long 
before their time. And if we call to mind how far the average dur- 
ation of life falls below the possible duration, we see how immense 
is the loss. When, to the numerous partial deductions which 
bad health entails, we add this great final deduction, it results 
that ordinarily more than one-half of life is thrown away. 

u Hence, knowledge which subserves direct self-preservation 
by preventing this loss of health, is of primary importance. 
We do not contend that possession of such knowledge would by 
any means wholly remedy the evil. For it is clear that in our 
present phase of civilization men's necessities often compel 
them to transgress. And it is further clear that, even in the 
absence of such compulsion, their inclinations would frequently 
lead them, spite of their knowledge, to sacrifice future good to 
present gratification. But we do contend that the right knowl- 
edge impressed in the right way would effect much ; and we 
further contend that as the laws of health must be recognized 
before they can be fully conformed to, the imparting of such 
knowledge must precede a more rational living — come when that 
may. We infer that as vigorous health and its accompanying 
high spirits are larger elements of happiness than any other 
things whatever, the teaching how to maintain them is a 



126 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

teaching that yields in moment to no other whatever. And 
therefore we assert that such a course of physiology as is need 
ful for the comprehension of its general truths, and their bear- 
ings on daily conduct, is an all-essential part of a ration a] 
education. 

" Strange that the assertion should need making! Strangei 
still that it should need defending ! Yet are there not a few by 
whom such a proposition will be received with something 
approaching to derision. Men who would blush if caught say 
ing Iphigenia instead of Iphigenia, or would resent as an 
insult any imputation of ignorance respecting the fabled labors 
of a fabled demi-god, show not the slightest shame in confess 
ing that they do not know where the Eustachian tubes are, what 
are the actions of the spinal cord, what is the normal rate of 
pulsation, or how the lungs are inflated. While anxious that 
their sons should be well up in the superstitions of two thous- 
and years ago, they care not that they should be taught any- 
thing about the structure and functions of their own bodies 
— nay, would even disapprove such instruction. So over- 
whelming is the influence of established routine ! So terribly 
in our education does the ornamental override the useful!" * 

But it may be objected that the curriculum of our colleges is 
already over-crowded, and that the addition of so large a matter is 
not to be thought of. 

Perhaps so . Yet the work of our colleges is to make men, 
not to weave lustrous shrouds for human wrecks. Colleges 
find their true sphere in fitting men for usefulness ; and as for 
utility, you might as well brain a man with an Indian war-club 
upon his entrance to the college, as to send him forth upon 
graduation day, physically incompetent. It is infantile to urge 
that there is no such severity in any part of the course of 
instruction assigned, as shall place the health of the student in 
jeopardy, if he will but take care of himself. Of course he 

* Education. Herbert Soencer. 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 127 

won't take care of himself. He is no better fitted to give him- 
self physical training than mental training. He is not yet fit to 
be his own preceptor. The student comes to the college in the 
sap, — comes to be seasoned. He comes physically lacking. 
He comes flat-chested, spindle-shanked, but half-developed and 
out of shape. It is the plain duty of his Alma Mater to shape 
him up physically as well as mentally. It is true that a few 
of the larger institutions of the East are waking up to their 
duty and their opportunity in this matter. They are actually 
creating chairs of physical culture and hygiene. Wonderful to 
relate, in one of these schools, " one or two extra lectures are usu- 
ally devoted to Stimulants, and Hygiene of the Reproductive 
Organs, and these subjects are still more fully presented, when 
desired, to the Gentleman of the Graduating Class." Our 
national military school has long been setting a fine example in 
this thing. That the course of study at West Point is severe 
and exacting, is well known. But the physical training is 
equally thorough. With this result. "The annual report of 
Gen. Merritt, Superintendent of the West Point Military Acad- 
emy, gives a gratifying showing of the effect of the thorough 
physical training enforced there. During the past year there 
were about 350 cadets and officers at the Academy, but during 
that time no deaths occurred, and the percentage of sick to the 
command was only one-fifth of one per cent." But with rare 
exceptions, the colleges and universities of this country, how- 
ever meritorious may be their theories, practically ignore phys- 
ical education. The picture drawn by Dr. D. A. Sargent, of 
the chair of Physical Training at Harvard, is not exaggerated. 
He says, in a recent number of the North American Review : 
" During the past few years the science of physiology and 
hygiene has made rapid advancement. The elementary laws 
of health have been more widely diffused and more intelligently 
followed by the people at large. The medical profession are 
trusting less to drugs and more to natural agents. Air, food, 



128 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

sleep and exercise, when properly administered, are great rem- 
edies as well as great preventives of disease, and doctor and 
patient alike begin to realize this fact. Our houses are better 
ventilated, our tables more healthfully provided, our time for 
sleep is lengthened, outdoor games are growing popular, and 
our styles of dress have been perceptibly modified in favor of 
health and comfort. This spirit of the age is recognized by the 
governing bodies of our colleges and seminaries, who announce 
in the catalogues of their institutions that due attention is given 
to health and physical training. Parents are attracted by these 
announcements, and send their sons and daughters to college in 
the confident hope that they will receive physical as well as 
mental training and development. But their expections are 
seldom realized. The intelligent system of physical culture 
which they had been led to expect exists only in the imagina- 
tions of the trustees and faculty. 

u It is true that nearly all of the larger seminaries and col- 
Leges in the New England and Middle States are provided with 
gymnasiums, or their students have access to some place for 
practicing physical exercises. In a few of these institutions 
light gymnastics are made a part of the curriculum, and are 
conducted under the eye of a capable instructor. The appara- 
tus used consists of wooden dumb-bells, wooden wands and 
Indian clubs, which vary in weight from one to four pounds 
each. The movements are arranged in a progressive series, 
and are designed to call into gentle activity all the muscles of 
the body. The time allotted to these exercises varies from one 
hour to two hours a week, and extends over a period of from 
three to eight months. In some cases regular attendance is 
required for the first year only, in others it is kept up through- 
out the school or college course. The maximum of required 
gymnasium work in any institution is not over two hours a 
week, and in one instance it is but one hour a week for a single 
term. No one acquainted with the structure of the human 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 129 

frame, or knowing anything of its natural requirements, will 
undertake to say that a half-hour four times a week devoted to 
muscular exercise is excessive, especially when the apparatus 
used is of the lightest description. Yet this is all that is pro- 
vided in the way of physical culture by the corporation in the 
best of our literary institutions. * * * * 

"A gentleman gives forty or fifty thousand dollars for the 
erection of a gymnasium. The planning is handed over to an 
architect, who has no idea of the kind of building required, but 
who feels it his duty to get up something that will at least be 
an ornament to the campus. He generally succeeds in doing 
this, and the donor and the corporation are satisfied. But what 
can be said of the structure, as to its fitness for a temple o^ 
health % It is a building eighty feet long and half as many 
wide, poorly lighted, heated, and ventilated. The bath-rooms 
are on one floor, and the dressing-rooms in the attic or cellar. 
The walls, roughly finished in brick or granite, are frescoed 
with dust in the summer and with frost in tke winter. The 
floor is made of spruce, and its seams are filled with gravel. In 
fact, incongruity and unfitness meet us on every side and in 
almost every detail. Why should this be so, when the amount 
of money contributed is large enough to meet all demands, and 
the ground space allotted is ample? Because the architects and 
builders employed do not know the requirements of a good gym- 
nasium, and seldom seek the advice of those who have prac- 
ticed gymnastics for years, and have made a life-study of the 
subject. The result is an edifice not adapted to the work foi 
which it was designed. Exceptions should be made of the 
finely constructed gymnasiums at Harvard and Princeton ; nor 
would we judge too sternly those institutions which have been 
obliged to remodel an old building in order to have any gym- 
nasium at all. 

1 c Having put up a building, the authorities proceed to fill it 

(9) 



130 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

with apparatus made by the college carpenter. This is arranged 
for appearance' sake rather than for use. The material is selected 
without regard to fitness, and put together with little knowledge 
of its object or design. Hanging ropes are made of hemp, and 
stiffly tarred to make them durable. This object is effected, 
for they are never used twice by the same person. The parallel 
bars are broad at the base and narrow at the top, so as to ren- 
der the grip insecure ; and they are generally made of some 
splintering material, in order to remind the performer which 
way he is going. The trapeze is bolted to a beam in the highest 
part of the room, and left pendant twenty-five feet from the 
fioor. Its bars are made of wood or iron, two inches in diame- 
ter, and, that the novice may have every opportunity of losing 
his balance, holes are made in the ends of each bar, the ropes 
put through and tied with knots underneath. The rungs on 
the horizontal ladder are three-quarters of an inch in diameter, 
and left rough, so that they may be firmly grasped, while in the 
vertical ladders they are smoothly polished. Both are carefully 
avoided, for, in the first case, every swing forward raises a 
blister; and in the second case, every step upward is attended 
with positive danger. The sand-bag weighs seventy-five pounds, 
and is covered with the heaviest kind of canvas. One solid 
blow removes the skin from every knuckle, and makes an im- 
pression that lasts for a life-time. This performance is never 
repeated. The matresses weigh four hundred pounds each, and 
are filled with excelsior, or corn-husks, which from constant ^rolling 
have become matted together in lumps. One had better land 
upon the fioor than upon one of these cradle-knolls, for the former 
only occasions a little tingling of the feet, while the latter invar, 
iably causes a sprained ankle. The weights are neither boxed 
in wood, nor framed in iron; but they start from a trough filled 
with saw-dust and dirt. Every movement is accompanied by a 
cloud of dust and a deafening rattle and bang. 

' ' This is a fair representation of college gymnasiums through- 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 131 

out the country. They are built without intelligent plan, filled 
with heavy, cumbersome, and in many cases perilous apparatus, 
and then left open to the hap-hazard experiment of all who 
choose to try them. With however good intentions of self-im- 
provement a student may enter a college, he is disheartened at 
the outset by such a gymnasium as this. He finds no appliances 
adapted to his needs as a beginner, and no provision for pro- 
gressive development. Constant assistance and direction are 
offered him in every branch of college work save this; here he 
finds nothing worthy of the name of instruction. * * * 
* So far as relates to the training of the mind, a sys- 
tem of required exercises has been universally adopted; but the 
training of the body has seldom been deemed of sufficient im- 
portance to merit like care and attention. We cannot but be- 
lieve that this mistaken idea has arisen from a misconception of 
the real function of physical exercise, and of its powerful influence 
upon the system at large. So long as body and mind are kept in 
antagonism, and the demands of one thought to be prejudicial to 
the interests of the other, but little advancement can be made in 
physical education. But when it shall be generally known that 
the object of muscular exercise is not to develop muscle only, but 
to increase the functional capacity of the organs of respiration, 
circulation, and nutrition; not to gain in physical endurance 
merely, but to augment the working power of the brain; not to 
attain bodily health and beauty alone, but to break up morbid 
mental tendencies, to dispel the gloomy shadows of despond- 
ency, and to insure serenity of spirit ; when man shall have 
learned that much of the ill-temper, malevolence, and unchari- 
tableness which pervades society arises from feeble health, and 
that the great mental and moral disturbances which sometimes 
threaten the stability of a government may be traced to physical 
causes, then will the training of the body rival in dignity and 
importance the training of the mind, for the interests of mind 
and body will be recognized as inseparable. This time is coming, 



132 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

though as yet some of our best and greatest thinkers, while 
admitting the value of physical exercise as an agent of health, 
still doubt the expediency of making it a department of educa- 
tion. They argue that a college is designed to give a boy an 
intellectual training, and is in no way responsible for his health 
and physical welfare. But when we consider that it takes from 
six to twelve years for a boy to complete his education, that dur- 
ing this time he is almost constantly away from home, and that it 
is a period with him when the body is peculiarly susceptible to 
good or evil influences, it would seem that those under whose 
charge he is placed should have some intelligent care of his 
physical as well as of his mental and moral training. When boys 
come from the fitting school equally prepared in body and in 
mind for the duties before them, it will then do to talk of mak- 
ing our higher institutions of learning training schools for the 
intellect alone. But, while they are filled with students whose 
minds have been forced and ' crammed ' in order to build a rep. 
utation for masters and tutors ; while class after class enters 
college well grounded in the classics and totally ignorant of the 
first principles of physiology and hygiene; while hundreds 
break down yearly for the want of physical stamina ; while pre- 
carious health is the rule and a sound and vigorous constitution 
the exception, it is little less than criminal folly to talk of such 
a course. The body must be cared for, and when and how are 
the only questions open for discussion. If our preparatory 
schools were more generally patronized, and more liberally 
furnished with appropriate appliances, we should say that here 
was the field for physical training. But under present condi- 
tions the work, if done at all, must be done in college ; and in 
college the first essential is to put this work on an equal footing 
with every other. If attendance at chapel or recitation is 
required, then attendance at the gymnasium should be insistec 
upon. Make this one of the stated requirements, and the stu- 
dent will look upon it as upon any other college duty. Th 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 133 

rent majority of students are disposed to do what is thought to 
be best for them, and the complaint arises — when complaint is 
heard — from a failure on the part of the faculty or the manag- 
ing boards to make provision for regular advancement in the 
exercises which they have introduced. 

" To keep a class drilling from two to four years with wooden 
dumb-bells and Indian clubs only, is as great a mistake in a 
scheme of physical education as it would be to confine the same 
class exclusively to the study of geometry, with a view to giving 
them a thorough mental training. Such exercises are elemen- 
tary in their nature, and in a prescribed course they should pre- 
cede all others . But, after they have done their work, which 
is to supple the joints, rather than to develop the muscles, the 
student should be allowed to go higher. A change is neces- 
sary, not only to meet the demands of increasing strength, but 
to keep up an interest. The pupil must have something to 
look forward to, something to struggle with and to master. In 
no place can a system of physical culture be carried out better 
than in a well-disciplined college. Before the freshman class 
begins gymnasium work every member should be examined 
physically, as he had previously been examined mentally, 
before entering college. Then, instead of putting all in one 
class, and adapting the prescribed exercises to the capacity 
of the weakest, grade the class according to the needs of its 
individual members, and arrange the exercises to correspond. 
Those with flat chests and consumptive tendencies should be 
put in one squad ; those with weak backs and slender 
waists in another ; those with strong bodies, but undeveloped 
limbs, in a third; and so on, until the whole class has been 
divided into squads composed of men of like capacity, and 
requiring similar treatment. The duration of this special 
training would, of course, depend upon the condition of each 
student, and should be left to the discretion of the instructor. 
After personal deficiencies have thus been corrected, the stu- 



134 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

dents should be transferred to the regular gymnastic class, and 
the members of this class should be led on from one piece of ap- 
paratus to another, until all the popular appliances of the gym- 
nasium have been brought into service. By changing the 
course of instruction from term to term, and allowing some 
freedom of choice, a lively interest could be maintained 
which would add greatly to the benefit of the exercise. At the 
close of the first year the class should be examined in their 
work, and be grouped the next year according to their profi- 
ciency. The books of the director should be open to inspection, 
and the vital statistics of each man recorded at the beginning of 
the year could be compared with those taken at the close. By 
such a system the physical condition of every student in college 
could be readily ascertained, and the value of regular and pro- 
gressive exercise be put to the test. The course that we have 
described is essentially practicable, and we believe it to be the 
only one by which the gymnasium can be made to minister to 
the wants of all, and its exercises rendered educational. * * 
"In looking over the whole field of physical sports and games 
we can find nothing so well adapted to the complete muscular 
education of youth as the exercises of a well-appointed, well- 
conducted gymnasium . Every variety of apparatus can be in- 
troduced, all the movements can be arranged in a progressive 
series, and the entire system can be adjusted to meet and 
remedy the physical defects of each individual student. The 
times are ripe for action on this subject. Public thought is 
turning to it as never before. People are asking with growing 
earnestness, if nothing can help them to resist the destructive 
wear and waste of American business life. When insanity and 
the hundred forms of nervous diseases are on the increase, and 
when thousands of our educated young men are falling out in 
the battle of life for the want of strength and vigor, there is 
room for anxious questioning about our methods of physical 
training. Help must come from some source.' ' 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 135 

Ever since the days of ancient Greece has the gymnasium 
stood the test as a practical, efficient means of bodily culture. 
It is no new fashion yet to be put into the crucible of experi- 
ence. It comes to us clothed in the hoary dignity of that departed 
past which it has outlived. In recent years it has had new and 
extended trial in the Young Men's Christian Associations. 
Their experience makes them its warm advocate. In the New 
York City Association, as many as 160 young men may be 
found under gymnasium instruction in a single evening. There 
are 900 dressing boxes in use by its members. The Chicago 
Association has over 1,000 young men practicing in its gym- 
nasium. The Liverpool, England, Association has one of the 
best gymnasiums in the world. Nine months after it was 
opened, 870 young men were using it. The Superintendent of 
the gymnasium of the Boston Association, uses the following 
language in his last annual report: "We are doing the 
same kind of work only more of it, that we have been 
doing the past six years. Many have found that the 
'ounce of prevention' is cheaper than the 'pound of cure,' 
and have learned to love exercise, and take it regularly. The 
' Hall of Health ' has been a place of great good to our young 
men, who are full of life and power, and need to use it only to 
bring into play the parts of their body that their day's work 
failed to reach. 

" We have had classes during the day and evening, and those 
who could not attend these, from any good reason, have been 
treated alone. We keep our members at work according to 
their ability and strength. 

"The youngest member of our gymnasium is about ten, 
while the oldest is 'seventy-six years of age. The most impor- 
tant time to take physical exercise is between the ages of fifteen 
and twenty, and forty and fifty. 

" We would like to mention a few of many cases of success- 
ful treatment of those who were sick. A man of about forty- 



136 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

five years of age was reduced from the enormous weight of 
232J pounds, without clothes, to the respectable weight of 178 
pounds. This was brought about by the daily use of the gym- 
nasium about one hour each morning for the space of three 
months. 

"A young man has gained twenty-five pounds by a year's faith 
ful practice. Another, who was sent by his medical adviser to be 
treated carefully for lung trouble, was examined by him 
after a few weeks' exercise, and symptoms of his disease could 
hardly be detected . 

" Let us state, and be fully understood, that our gymnastic 
aim is to fit men for better work in life's battle by attending to 
our department of physical culture. There is no person, no 
matter what his daily work may be, who would not be made 
stronger and healthier by taking proper ' body-building ' exer- 
cise." 

It should be a matter of course that, whether in or out of 
"colleges, gymnasiums, and all other means employed in the 
furtherance of physical education, be placed in charge of com- 
petent men. Unfortunately, what should be, is far from what 
is. Anybody or nobody is considered good enough to set up 
for a figure-head in this department. It is true, men competent 
to fill such positions are rarely found ; but it is fairly urged that 
the reason for this is found in the absence of any demand for 
such men. 

; ' We never recur to the enthusiasm with which Froebel, 
Horace Mann, the elder Seguin and Canon Kingsley insist upon 
the role which physical education must bear in a system of edu- 
cation, without a feeling of some mortification that so many 
teachers are unconsciously making for it such a narrow sphere. 
It is divided up and assigned in the most accommodating way 
among those, who if others attempted to fill their special 
departments, with similar agility of preparation, would be loud 
in their cry of superficiality and incompetency." * 
* Dr. Ezra M. Hunt, in an address before the Social Science Ass'n, Sept. 1883. 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 137 

The present amount of mental work staked out for the four 
years' college course, need not be curtailed. The increased 
efficiency of the mind, when stimulated by a first-class physique, 
more than counterbalances the actual expenditure in minutes 
necessary for its attainment. Pliny avers that "the mind is 
stimulated by movements of the body," and Galen that "all 
the powers of the soul are increased and renewed by physical 
exercise." What but this rational best use of time does Glad- 
stone mean when he exclaims ; "Believe me when I tell you 
that thrift of time will repay you in after-life with a usury of 
profit beyond your most sanguine dreams, and that the waste of it 
will make you dwindle, alike in intellectual and in moral stature, 
beyond your darkest reckonings . " Harriet Martineau says ol 
Sir Walter Scott's education: "Here is a boy lying about in 
the fields, when he should have been at his Latin Grammar; 
reading novels when he should have been entering college ; 
spearing salmon instead of embellishing a peroration. Yet this 
personage came out of this wild kind of discipline, graced with 
the rarest combination of qualifications for enjoying existence, 
achieving fame, and blessing society. Deeply learned, though 
neither the languages, nor the philosphy of the schools, made 
part of his acquisition ; robust as a plowman ; able to walk like 
a pedler; industrious as a handicraftsman; intrepid as the 
bravest hero of his own immortal works. Here is enough to 
put us on inquiring, not whether learning, and even school dis- 
cipline be good things, but whether the knowledge usually 
thought most essential, the school discipline which is commonly 
esteemed indispensable, be in fact either the one or the other." 

It would seem that if any mistakes are to be made, it were 
better that the error be over-liberality toward things physical, 
rather than things mental. Chancellor Kent tells this story of 
his own life. 

" I was brought up among the highlands and hilly parts of 
Connecticut, and was never kept on the high pressure plan of 



138 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

instruction. It was not then the fashion. I went to school, 
and studied in the easy careless way, until I went to college. I 
was daily, and sometimes for a month or more, engaged in ju- 
venile play, and occasional efforts on- the farm. I was roaming 
over the fields, and fishing, and sailing, and swimming, and 
riding, and playing ball, so as not to be but very superficially 
learned* when I entered college. I was not in college half the 
time. I was at home at leisure, or at gentle work, and much 
on horseback, but never in the least dissipated. I easily kept 
pace with my class, for it was in the midst of the American 
War, and there were no scholars or much stimulus to learn. 
Silent leges inter arma. "When I went to study law, I had my 
own leisure, and great exercise and relaxation in enchanting 
rides, and home visits, until I got to the bar. I lived plain — 
drank nothing but water — ate heartily of all plain, wholesome 
food that came in my way — was delighted with rural scenery, 
and active and healthy as I could be. Here I laid the basis of 
a sound constitution, in which my brain had not been unduly 
pressed or excited, and only kept its symmetry with the rest of 
the animal system. It was not until I was twenty-four, that I 
found that I was very superficially taught, and then voluntarily 
betook myself to books, and to learn the classics, and everything 
else I could read, * The ardor and rapidity with which I pur- 
sued my law and literary course, was great and delightful, and 
my health and spirits were sound and uniform, and neither has 
faltered, down to this day." Best of all, he was sixty-nine 
years old when he wrote these words. " Thus we are discover- 
ing," says Herbert Spencer, "the wisdom of the saying, that 
one secret in education is ' to know how wisely to lose time.' ,: 
That the American disregard for the physical in education 
has reached its utmost limit, may not be a vain hope. 
It is stated that there has just been established in Bal- 
liol College, Oxford, a lectureship in bodily science, by a 
good Briton who has made the endowment five thousand 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 139 

pounds. May the good example thus set become a beneficent 
" craze" on this side of the water, until the words of Horace 
Mann shall be to the student just as significant in the physical, 
as in the mental sense. " Lost, yesterday, somewhere between 
sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty 
diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone for- 
ever." 

But, to many of us, school and college days are things of the 
past. For us the drill of the class room is forever ended, and 
any change in its methods cannot now directly affect us. But, 
"every person has two educations, — one which he receives from 
others, and one, more important, which he gives himself," 
says Gibbon . We must now look wholly to this self-education. 
We are fairly launched upon the sea of life, we are at the very 
zenith of our powers. We have learned in the school of 
endeavor, that most thorough of pedagogues, that genius with- 
out work is dead, that genius consists principally in the capac- 
ity for and the will to do a vast amount of work, to work stead- 
ily, uninterruptedly, objectively from one week's end to 
another, from one year's end to another. It makes no differ- 
ence whether our work be in the field of literature, science, 
art, commerce, the professions, or politics — there is but one 
invariable rule determining the degree of our attainment. 
The measure of our capacity for work will be the exact measure of 
our success. I know of no exceptions whatever to this rule. Again, 
our capacity for work of any and all sorts, mental and physical, 
will be in direct proportion to our bodily vigor. There may be 
some exceptions, but they are only such as serve to emphasize 
the rule. " To the strong hand and strong head, the capacious 
lungs and vigorous frame, fall, and always will fall, the heavy 
burdens ; and where the heavy burdens fall, the great prizes 
fall too." "All intellectual labor proceeds upon a physical 
basis," says Philip Gilbert Hamerton. " The greatest actors 
have been the hardest workers," writes Lawrence Barret. The 



140 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

great men in all departments of the world's work have been so 
uniformly men possessed of immense physical power, that it 
seems a waste of time to cite individual cases in proof of the fact. 
Who needs to be reminded of the Bismarcks, the Gladstones, 
the John Brights,. the Wellingtons, the Websters, the Choates, 
the Sumners, the Vanderbilts, the Blaines, and their vast 
resources of physical endurance ? From Michael Angelo's 
Moses, down to our own President Garfield, the great in accom- 
plishment have been the great in endeavor, and the great in 
endeavor have been the great in physique ; and Richard Co&ur 
de Lion is lion-hearted because leonine in frame. Frail body, 
faint heart and faltering brain belong together in the very 
nature of things ; while the lusty frame, the lion heart, the 
looming intellect are by nature a trinity, whose sundering 
always carries with it a suggestion of the unnatural and phe- 
nomenal. How grand is it to feel within one's self the pres- 
ence of this mighty triumvirate, whose resistless power a whole 
world's frowning cannot crush! Buttressed brain and steel- 
like sinew, and lion heart, what giant men ye build for us — 
great in war, greater in peace, greatest in the hearts of their 
countrymen. Build us up also into this stature of perfect man- 
hood, that we may indeed feel within ourselves, with each 
breath that we draw, with each step that we take, with each put- 
ting forth of masterful effort, that we are of the King's household. 
Do you call this an idle prayer? Do you say that you were 
naturally a delicate child, or that you know your health to be 
permanently impaired, and that for you the planning of any 
work must needs be the prophecy of an aching head, a restless 
pillow, an exhausted body, with nerves unstrung? In all kindness 
let me tell you that you are talking childishly . That all this is 
nonsense . What! Is our life a half worn garment which can 
never be new again, and must we slouch shabbily through this 
life until clothed upon with immortality? From the time of 
the classic arena down to the plebeian circus of to-day, we have 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 141 

had it thrust into our very faces by constant object lessons that 
the physical man is amazingly responsive to any demand made 
upon it for development in any particular direction, and lavish 
in rewarding any care bestowed upOn its general condition. 
The acrobat has shown how joints will consent to do the imposs- 
ible; the Chinese, how nature consents to little feet when she can- 
not have better ones; the Flat-head Indian, how she will consent to 
an altered shape of the dome of thought, without taking away 
the reason ; the pedestrian, how a Eowell in the tread-mill can 
train his legs to render him incredible service ; the man of letters, 
how a slender Bryant, swinging a chair about his head, can keep 
the pristine vigor of his powers clear up to the eighties ; the 
statesman, how a Gladstone can match the wear of Court with 
the elixir of the woodsman's axe. 

" Ah, but," you say, "did I live amid the green fields and 
forest shade of the country, all this were true. — 

' G-od made the country, and man made the town, 
What wonder, then, that health and virtue — gifts 
That can alone make sweet the bitter draught 
That life holds out to all— should most abound, 
And least be threatened in the fields and groves?' 
but I must live in the city, my work lies among the busy haunts 
of men, and under these artificial conditions of life I cannot 
hope to live otherwise than under constant physical protest." 

I know that this is a popular notion. Is it true ? It is one 
thing to leave the cares of a year's work all behind you within 
the city walls, and seek the annual rest in the quietude of fields 
and woods where, Emerson says, a man throws off his years; 
and quite another, to work the whole year round in the country. 
In centuries long past, Jehovah set His temple, and the center 
of the religious life of His chosen nation, within the gates of 
its chief city, and ever since, the advance of civilization has 
tended to the building of larger and larger towns ; and civilization 
does not progress backward, for we read that that distinguished 
faith which lifted up the Patriarch of old to be the Father of all 



142 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

the Faithful — the triumph of that very Christian faith taught 
pastoral Abraham to look for a city which hath foundations. I 
submit that, in the vast majority of cases, the farmer's wife is 
very much of a dispirited drudge ; that the farmer himself, 
instead of being the elastic athlete, is a stiffened, logy dray- 
horse, passing through life with the clumping, stolid gate of an 
inelastic son of toil . His sanitary surroundings cannot com- 
pare with ours of the city. Our city water supply is not an 
artificial condition. Continually the target of expert chemists, 
and the subject of constant agitation, it is greatly better than 
the open well of the farmer, constantly liable to the most 
stupid pollution, into which no one ever thinks of looking, and 
which is the last place in the world to go for approximately 
pure water. Our city heating with steam, securing an equable tem- 
perature, in high ceilinged rooms, with its accompanying grate for 
luxury, which of necessity brings with it the best of ventilation 
safety-valves, is not an artificial condition, and is greatly to be 
preferred to the modern farmer's stove in low, small rooms. Our 
city systems of sewage are not artificial conditions, and though 
they may be defective, who would hesitate one moment as to 
the choice between them, and the abominations of slops and 
out-houses which degrade the ordinary farm-house. Our city 
markets, giving us the best which earth and air and sea can lay 
at the feet of man, are not artificial conditions. Who for one 
instant would compare them — their finest of meats, their choicest 
of vegetables, their completest assortment of fish and fowl, their 
wonderful fruits brought from every quarter of the globe, pre- 
served, if need be, by modern art and science, their best of every 
thing — with the farmer's table and cuisine? While no one pre- 
tends to raise a question as to the superiority of city over country 
in intellectual opportunity. The fact of the matter is, we must 
get out from behind this sickly whine of artificial conditions, 
where we have been hiding as an excuse for our rickety city 
physique, and put the blame where it belongs. The fact of the 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 143 

matter is, that, both in the mental and the physical, all the way 
from candy to Christianity, the city gets the best of everything. 

But I hear you say, " This is all very fine, and a very ingen- 
ious argument, and it would all be true enough but for one thing 
which you have forgotten, and which alters the case entirely. 
You entirely forget and leave out of the account the most im- 
portant factor, — the high-strung tension, the unceasing strain to 
which we are relentlessly put by the very fact of this flood 
of good things which is pouring in upon us without cessation, — 
these social privileges which are but narrowly divided from an 
unrelenting exaction. Oh, the tension, the strain, morning, 
noon and night, day in and day out, week in and week out. It 
is this that condemns us to a rickety manhood and womanhood 
living under constant protest of physical inability. This one 
factor changes totally the result. There is no better way open 
to us. We must stagger along as best we may. This whole 
nineteenth century is rushing toward the insane asylum. This 
planet of ours will one day be but a collossal mad-house. Oh, 
the strain, the strain, the strain!" 

Come with me to your music room. I lead you to a seat 
before the silent instrument. Ah, what a familiar and beloved 
place it is to which I have brought you . Here is the friend 
who always understands you, always knows you. Here is the 
friend who meets your lightest fancy, and is in perfect chord 
with your deepest grief. How you love its mute white key- 
board, with its dark sentinels of the semitones. 'Tis but the 
signal of a finger, and it pours forth its wealth of matchless 
melody and heaven-descending harmony. Storm-tossed and 
tempest-driven on life's tumultuous seas, to this friend you fly 
for its "Peace be still " — for all harmony is the voice of God. 
And as the child crying in the dark at it knows not what, is 
comforted by the beloved and familiar mother-voice, so life and 
death, with all their agitation, are ever comforted by the divine 
voice of harmony. I ask you if you do not fear that this friend 



144 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

will one day exhaust its store of harmony, and you tell me that 
the store increases with each prodigal giving. I ask you if this 
friend ever seems perturbed, and you glance at it standing 
silently before us, and tell me that to you it is the symbol of 
repose— of the quiet possession of power unlimited. Do you 
know the measure of the strain which gives this harp of a 
thousand strings its voice and meaning? The sum of the 
tension of its strings is twelve tons! And can you, in the 
presence of your inanimate friend, tell me that you must of 
necessity be out of tune, mentally and physically, because of 
the strain imposed upon you ? If you do not stop to magnify it 
by adding up the aggregate of the year's demands, is the strain 
of any particular day so very great ? There is physiological 
philosophy in the petition ' 'Give us day by day our daily bread. ' ' 
What is the sum of the tension to which you are subject — you 
who are newly attuned, who have the tension of the yielding 
wires restored by the blessed sleep of each returning night ? 
Does it exceed twelve tons ? If you should take your grand 
piano and waltz it through over-heated parlors all night long, 
until its legs were rickety; and then, in evening dress, take it 
out into the winter morning, until its sounding-board be warped 
and cracked and ruined; and corrode its wires with vinegars 
and snap them with excesses, it would indeed be but a ruined 
heap of discords. But don't tell me that the strain upon the 
wires of the piano was too great. Don't tell me that the strain 
imposed upon the nineteenth century pianos — the very thing 
which makes them the noble instruments that they are — don't 
tell me that the strain imposed upon a nineteenth century 
piano, especially in large cities, is so great as necessarily to 
ruin it. 

Don't talk to me about strains— Wellington did not break 
down. Don't talk to me about strains — Lincoln did not break 
down. Don't talk to me about strains — Grant and Lee did not 
break down. Don't talk to me about strains — Garfield did not 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 145 

breakdown. Talktj me of physical law transgressed; willfully, 
when you knew better; ignorantly, when you did not know. 
Tell me that you are ready to do works meet for repentance, 
and we will sit down together, and together rediscover the laws 
of health; rediscover the way by which we may regain that 
long lost elasticity which wakes each morning full of an energy 
which, in view of the day's work, is as the war-horse neighing 
impatiently for the fray; which returns each evening ; 'Not as the 
quarry-slave scourged to his dungeon," but with that victorious 
fatigue which triumphs in endeavor. There is no elixir of life 
like this, there is no subtle stimulant which for one poor hour 
can wing our feet like the high courage born in us of this con- 
scious adequacy of manly strength. And I hold out the high 
promise of this physical El Dorado to every one, without fear 
that in a single instance I shall fail to make it good. In the 
words of Hon. Dr. George B. Loring, U. S. Commissioner of 
Agriculture, — " A strong frame is not, indeed, the inheritance 
of every man, but it is seldom that a wise and constant attempt 
to strengthen a weak one fails in its endeavors. I have known 
many a stooping and awkward youth become active, erect, and 
strong through a persistent determination to overcome his 
weaknesses. I have known many a young dyspeptic, many a 
young hypochondriac, restored to health and cheerfulness by 
out door exercise, and by gratefully and heartily receiving the 
food that was set before him. Nature gives great strength to 
those who devote themselves to her cause, and responds readily 
to every intelligent and honest appeal to her life- and health- 
giving influences. " I do not fear a single exception. I have 
yet to meet with a single individual working under protest, 
whose daily labor was a dread and a distress, — Ihave yet to 
meet with a single one whose powers were not capable of — not 
addition — but multiplication. 

In teaching you this multiplication table I shall have nothing 

(10) 



146 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

to say of medicines. My purpose is to show you how to avoid 
being driven to the necessity of using drugs. It is the physi- 
cian's highest duty. Medicines never made one ounce of mus. 
cle, or bone, or blood. Medicine is medicine, not food. Medi- 
cine never added one pound to the impact of vital force. Medi- 
cine only attacks the morbid force at work in the economy ; 
and when that is conquered, the vital forces, not medicine, 
build the economy up to its pristine vigor. The work of medi. 
cine is always that of attack. It must attack and destroy the 
morbid element at work. Hence drugs are always destructive, 
not constructive. The constructives are the bath, rest, fresh 
air, food, sleep, exercise. Now while your physician may give 
you much aid in getting out of the mire into which you have 
sunk, it is manifestly unfair to expect him to do all the work, 
or the largest share of the work, of setting your feet upon a 
rock and keeping them-there. You cannot manufacture health 
out of prescription blanks. In all schools of medicine in all 
ages, the foundation maxim has been, " Tolle causam" — 
remove the cause. To enlarge the knowledge of causes is the 
great work of medicine to-day. Just so long as any indictment 
may fairly be drawn up against you for violation of the laws of 
health, just so long will your shortest and only certain road 
to health be through — not the drug store — but through obedi- 
ence to those laws. Just so long as you allow yourself to be, 
in common parlance, "run down; " just so long as physically 
and therefore in your totality, you may be fairly quoted as 
below par, just so long have you no right to expect that the 
contents of a wholesale drug house poured down your throat 
will bring you back to the standard of health. The guilty 
cause, your own failure to take decent care of your physical 
self, is still at work. Tolle causam — remove the cause. Take the 
same intelligent care of yourself that you would of the ten thou- 
sand-dollar horse in your stable, and the prompt return of boy- 
hood elasticity will be at once a surprise and a delight. Ponce 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 147 

de Leon was right. There is a fountain of perpetual youth and 
bloom, but its name is not to be found among the labels of any 
drug store or pharmacy. .The fountain of perpetual youth is 
within you, and if you will but take the pains to see to it that 
the rubbish of each day's work be not allowed to fall into and 
choke this ever-flowing spring of new life, you shall day by day 
"renew your strength, you shall mount up with wings as 
eagles; you shall run and not be weary, you shall walk and not 
faint ; " and before ever you are aware that the evening draweth 
nigh, shall you feel upon your brow the " breath of the eternal 
morning." 

It is impossible to survey the precise path for each individual, 
by which this effectiveness of perfect vigor shall be attained, 
setting thick the stakes of thou shalt and thou shalt not, and 
saying, this is the way, walk ye in it. Yet as the laws of vital 
force are everywhere the same, and as the individuals who 
make up the great human family are characteristically alike in 
their neglect of physical culture, no matter what their work 
may be, it will be to the purpose to take up in detail a few of 
the neglected, fundamental duties; which at the same time 
will serve to illustrate the underlying principles. A reasonable 
observance of these duties will so nearly accomplish physical 
redemption that any necessary additions can easily be made 
by each individual to suit any peculiarity of circumstance. 

The value and neglect of tl^e bath have been considered in 
the previous chapter. Too great emphasis cannot be laid upon 
its importance. Surgeon Hamilton, of New York, pithily says 
that " dirt, debauchery, disease and death are links of the 
same chain." In his work on " Training in Theory and Prac- 
tice," Maclaren, of the Oxford Gymnasium, remarks: " Bath- 
ing must be viewed as an agent of health in two distinct 
aspects : first, in its capacity as a cleanser of the skin, and sec- 
ondly, as an agent of considerable tonic power. In its first 
aspect it addresses the skin as the organ of transpiration only ; 



148 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

in the second, as the organ of common sensation, possessed of 
great nervous sensibility and influence. In the first, it addresses 
the skin with the view of removing from it all impediments to 
functional ability, and arousing it to greater activity ; in the 
second, it acts directly through the skin upon the nervous and 
circulatory systems. " The bath is to the man what oil is to 
machinery. 

Rest is of two kinds. The conscious rest when we turn the 
key of store or office at the end of the day's work, not to again 
take up that work until the succeeding day, or when we take a few 
days' annual vacation from work ; and the unconscious rest in 
sleep. Of the first it is only necessary to remark that the 
whole science of the successful taking of this rest is found in 
the utter repudiation of all thoughts in any way related to busi- 
ness, be that business what it may. The man whose home-face 
is the barometer of the day's business, is liable to break down 
any day. The clergyman who preaches in vacation, the profes- 
sor who has an eye out for u the college " all through the sum- 
mer's pseudo-rest, the man of business who calculates the prob- 
able returns of an investment in the vicinity of his lake-side 
retreat, are all defrauding those for whom they labor. He who 
allows his work to be his overseer, with the crack of the whip per- 
petually sounding in his ears, will come to be but a slavish sort 
of workman at last. While he whom the night's encampment 
makes eager for the fray, is very near the best possible per- 
formance. 

" Should it be necessary to say a word about sleep? One 
would think not. Nature, we may imagine, is sufficient for 
herself in this matter. Let a man sleep when he is sleepy, and 
rise when the crow of the cock, or the glare of the sun, rouses 
him from his torpor. Exactly so, if Nature always got fair 
play; but she is swindled and flouted in so many ways by 
human beings, that a general reference to her often becomes a 
useless generality. In the matter of sleep especially students are 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 149 

great sinners; nay, their very profession is a sin against 
repose ; and the strictest prophylactic measures are necessary to 
prevent certain poaching practices of thinking men into the 
sacred domain of sleep. Cerebral excitement, like strong cof- 
fee, is the direct antagonist of sleep; therefore the student 
should so apportion his hours of intellectual task-work, that the 
more exciting and stimulating brain exercise should never be 
continued direct into the hour for repose ; bat let the last work 
of the day be always something comparatively light and easy, 
or dull and soporific ; or better still, let a man walk for an hour 
before bed, or have a pleasant chat with a chum, and then there 
can be no fear but that Nature, left to herself, will find, without 
artifice, the measure of rest which she requires." * 

True of Scottish students, these words are equally applicable 
to Americans of all pursuits. Even locomotives must have 
rest. Loss of sleep is the first step toward the insane asylum. 
Sleeplessness means physical and mental ruin. Insomnia is to 
the nervous system what the cruel, rock-ribbed reef is to the 
ship, — destruction, despair, death. Nine hours' sleep is no 
rule of safety for us. To sleep from midnight until nine 
o'clock the next morning is by no means the equivalent of the . 
sleep from nine in the evening to six o'clock in the morning. 
It makes all the difference in the world where you put those 
nine hours. Without attempting to spin theories which shall 
be more or less cunning guesses why it is that the early hours 
of the night are the most valuable for sleep, it is well that we 
accept the fact from our own unbiased observation and experi- 
ence, and systematically order our sleep in conformity thereto. 
It is not necessary to know exactly why, when we go to bed at 
twelve and sleep until nine o'clock the next morning, we arise 
with every energy departed and every faculty weakened. We 
all know it to be the fact, and can accept the undisputed with- 
out wasting time on hypotheses. It is when we '*go to bed 

* Professor John Stuart Blackie. 



150 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

with the chickens" that early rising begins to be a virtue. It 
has been wittily said that " early risers are* conceited all the 
morning and stupid all the afternoon. " That is true only of 
those who attempt the impossible God-and-Mammon service of 
late hours in the evening and early hours in the morning. 
Pestalozzi declared that "children, stinted in their sleep, are 
never wide-awake; " and "men are but children of a larger 
growth." It is true only of those who dedicate the night to its 
legitimate use, that ' ' Heaven trims their lamps while they sleep. " 
The advice of Maclaren is based upon a normal bedtime. U I 
would," he says, " urgently recommend the man in training to 
rise early. To him who would build up his body in health and 
strength, this will be the corner-stone of the edifice. There is 
in the morning air an invigorating freshness which is sought in 
vain at any other period of the day. There is an absolute sen- 
sational pleasure in the act of inhalation of the external air in 
the early morning, quite special and peculiar. And let him not 
only rise early, but do this and rise the very first instant he 
awakes. The fact of his being awake shows that the full 
recruitment of his frame has been accomplished ; that bed can 
do no more for him, and that after this, every hour passed in 
the air of the sleeping-room is a serious loss, for in one hour 
every drop of blood in his body will have many times passed 
through his lungs, and have been subjected to the air inspired, 
be it pure or impure. Let him never forget this. * * * 
The instant that a man is awake, let him get out of bed ; and 
the instant that he is out of bed, * * * let him open his win- 
dows to their fullest extent ; thus giving to his apartments and 
their furnishings what he gives to his body by the agency of 
water ; for these two agents of health should ever go hand-in- 
hand, fresh Air and fresh Water." 

Sleep at the proper time and in proper quantity is an absolute 
necessity if you are to be a genuine man. " The president of 
one of the largest banks in this country told the writer that, 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 151 

disappointed one summer in not getting a run to Europe, reflec- 
tion told him that 'one marked benefit such jaunts had brought 
him was from the increased sleep he was enabled to get, that there- 
upon he determined on* longer sleeps at home. He got them, and 
found, as he well put it, that he could ' fight better. s Beset all 
day long with men wanting heavy loans, that fighting tone, that 
ability to say ' No ' at the right time and in a way which showed 
he meant it, must have not only added to his own well-being, 
but to the bank's protection as well." * 

"But," some one says, "I cannot sleep. Wakefulness is 
my relentless, ever-haunting tormentor." That is because 
you have transgressed in other directions. By the observance 
of the bath of which we have already spoken, and of the exer- 
cise of which we shall speak in a moment, sleep will come if 
you but give it opportunity. "Benjamin Franklin proposed to 
prevent colds, and even small-pox, by air-baths, and found that 
he could relieve insomnia by simply removing the bedclothes 
for a couple of minutes. c I rise early almost every morning, ' 
says he, ' and sit in my chamber without any clothes whatever, 
half an hour or an hour, according to the season, either reading 
or writing. This practice is not the least painful but, on the 
contrary, agreeable, and if I return to bed afterward before I 
dress myself, as it sometimes happens, I make a supplement to- 
my night's rest of one or two hours of the most pleasing sleep 
that can be imagined. ' " 

It is imperative that we return to the ways in which our 
fathers walked all the days of their lives, that, early to bed and 
early to rise, we may be powerfully equipped for our work. We 
cannot afford at any price to sell our birthright to the sacred 
hours of sleep. Sleep, which is at once the image and the ene 
my of death. Sleep, with its life-giving power, a bestowment 
from Hiin whose gift is life eternal. 



* How to Get Strong Blaikie. 



152 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

V Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of Care, 
The death of each day's life, -sore labor',s bath, 
Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course, 
Chief nourisher in life's feast." 

It makes all the difference between life and death, whether 
the organism be fed upon its proper foods, or upon poison. 
Bat how many would think of giving a significance to this 
statement, beyond the foods found upon our tables, and the 
liquids ordinarily swallowed ? Yet there is a pabulum supplied 
the organism eighteen times a minute, day and night, without 
interruption. How much care do you take that this shall be 
the best of food, and not poison ? How carefully do you guard 
against adulteration of that food of which you consume most ? 
" Be it remembered that man subsists upon the air more than 
upon his meat and drink ; no one can exist for an hour without 
a copious supply of air," says Thackeray. "Disease is a hot- 
house plant," says Haller. u This gas (carbonic acid), created 
by breathing the air, destroyed the lives of 123 persons in 
eleven hours, in the ' Black Hole ' of Calcutta, in the year 
1756. Many millions of human beings have lost their lives 
from the same cause since the date of this occurence ; yet not 
always in so short a space of time. Forty out of every one 
hundred die of impure air : of this number it is fair to estimate 
that twenty die directly or indirectly from the influence of car- 
bonic acid gas, as the result of over crowding, and of badly 
ventilated rooms," says Surgeon Frank H. Hamilton of New 
York City. 

u On the day of judgment God will perhaps pardon you for 
starving y<>ur children when bread was so dear; but, if he should 
charge you with stinting themin Jus free air, what answer shall 
you make ? "' says Jean Paul. And yet we are strangely neg- 
ligent in providing an unlimited supply of fresh air. Take our 
sleeping-rooms. We push the bed off into a corner and then 
open a window at the other side of the room. As though in 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 153 

this manner we could get anything like an adequate supply of 
fresh air. If we would roll the bed out into the center of the 
room, and take off the high head-board, so that we could have the 
free air flowing all about us, there would be less complaint of 
headaches, and of "waking tired." The writer has bright 
memories of a summer whose refreshing sleep was on the lawn, 
with nothing but a little French shelter tent, open at both ends, 
between him and the stars. "Open your windows at night. 
Night air is seldom, if ever, so poisonous as your own breath,' ' 
again urges Dr. Hamilton. This fear of the night air is absurd. 
As though the Creator would poison His children while they 
sleep. Drafts are altogether another matter . They mean the 
exposure of a limited portion of the surface to cold, lowering its 
temperature and destroying the equilibrium. And this means a 
" cold." When the great atmospheric sea flows all round you, 
fear it not; but 

" If the wind strikes you through a hole, 
Go count your beads and mind your soul." 

Professor Biackie speaks earnestly to students of the neces- 
sity for fresh air. " I believe there are few things more neces- 
sary than to warn students against the evil effects of close rooms 
and bad ventilation. Impure air can never make pure blood ; 
and impure blood corrupts the whole system. But the evil is, 
that, no immediate sensible effects being produced from a con- 
siderable amount of imparity in the air, thoughtless and careless 
persons — that is, I am afraid, the great majority of persons — 
go on inhaling it without receiving any hint that they are im- 
bibing poison. But those evils are always the most dangerous 
-of which the approaches are the most insidious. Let students, 
therefore, who are often confined in small rooms, be careful to 
throw open their windows whenever they go out ; and, if the 
windows of their sleeping- room are so situated that they can be 
kept open without sending a draught of air directly across the 
sleeper, let them by all means be left open night and day, both 



154 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

summer and winter. In breezy Scotland at least, this practice, 
except in the case of very sensitive subjects, can only be bene 
ficial. In hot countries, where insalubrious vapors in some 
places infest the night, it may be otherwise." 

In our latitude, where the artificial heating of our houses is 
so large a necessity, the question of pure air cannot be consid- 
ered without recognizing the problems surrounding heat and 
ventilation. A few terse sentences from Dr. Hamilton must 
suffice. 

" Radiated heat is better than heated columns of air. The 
sun, and an open fire-place or grate furnish radiated heat. 

u Hot-air furnaces, with registers opening directly into the 
rooms, supply only heated columns of air ; which are generally 
dry and impure. Rooms thus warmed are first and most 
heated near the ceiling. 

"Air heated by red-hot, or very hot iron, is rendered in a 
great measure unfit for respiration. 

u It requires ten degrees more heat to keep warm in a close 
room heated by burnt air, (from hot-air furnaces, close stoves, 
<fec), than in a well- ventilated room, heated by radiated heat 
(from an open fire-place, &c). 

" Pure air kindles and sustains a fire within the body. This 
internal fire is, however, quickly extinguished by carbonic acid 
(manufactured in breathing.) 

"Debit and Credit account of hot-air furnaces: 

"Or. No smoke; no dirt; less labor; an atmosphere through- 
out the house, especially during the day, causing a sense of 
languor, and encouraging repose and sleep. 

"Dr. Disturbed sleep at night; colds; coughs; croup; con- 
sumption ; debility; nervousness ; irritability; neuralgia ; head- 
aches ; vertigo ; weariness ; general loss of health ; loss of 
beauty; loss of life; doctor's bills." 

In a paper read before the New York Academy of Medi- 
cine on "The Struggle for Life against Civilization, Lux- 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 155 

ury and ^Estbeticism," Dr. Hamilton says; "I repeat then, 
that in order to render pure and innocuous the atmosphere of 
our houses, whether the sources of its impurity are to be found 
in our present systems of lighting, heating or drainage, it will 
be necessary first of all that civilization should make some con- 
cessions. * * 

"First. That all plumbing having any direct or indirect 
communication with the sewers, shall be excluded from those 
portions of our houses which we habitually occupy. In other 
words, that it shall be placed in a separate building or annex. 

"Second. That we return to the open fire-place, or the 
grate, as a means of warming our private houses. 

"Third. A diminished consumption of oxygen by gas- 
burners. It is still an open question, whether we shall be able 
to light our dwellings with electricity; but so long as we are 
obliged to depend upon gas we must content ourselves with 
light, and not insist upon illumination. " 

There is no single subject relating to health upon which man- 
kind is better informed than that of food. More than that, the 
American nation is" wonderfully well fed. As a people we are 
well informed as to what constitutes good food, and better yet, 
we are so well-to-do, that we can afford to place good food upon 
our tables. And while there is room for some suggestion so 
long as humanity will persist in consuming pickles by the hogs- 
head and buckwheat by the car load, yet we will pass by the 
question What shall we eat ? because we are sufficiently well 
informed for all ordinary purposes. Yet it does seem a pity, 
when the Lord has given us so many things which are really good 
to eat, that we should fill our stomachs with such miserable 
fare as green cucumbers and buckwheat cakes. It is a great 
mistake to regard our digestive apparatus as a sort of stone- 
crusher, intended fur the grinding of any substance which may 
be fed to it ; not standing the test as a good machine should 
unless it dispose of the most refractory substances without com- 



156 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

plaint ; its destiny unfulfilled unless kept constantly at work. 
But we make greater mistake in our manner of eating, than in the 
quality of our food. JSTot that I would raise the old cry against 
water while eating. Drink if you care to. Nor yet indulge a 
harangue on the need of more careful mastication, though it is 
reasonable to ask that the process of solution be aided by a fair 
subdivision of the solid substance. But it must be insisted 
upon that a leisurely, contented spirit is a prime requisite of a 
successful meal. If you bring the weight of business cares and 
the incubus of business schemes to the table, you offer a prem- 
ium to dyspepsia. Hurry means hot head, cold feet, heavy 
stomach. Be a parliamentarian. When your head has the 
floor, do not allow your stomach to be interrupting it by won- 
dering what it is to have for dinner, and so retard one-half the 
rapidity and efficiency of the work done by that head. And 
when your stomach has lawfully obtained possession of the 
floor, or rather table, don't let it be diverted from the business 
in hand, by constant questions from the head as to the order of 
business for the afternoon. Call the house to order, keep the 
house in order, give an equal opportunity for doing good work 
to both the committee on nutrition, and the committee on ways 
and means. If you don't, my word for it, you will receive 
minority reports from one or both which will cause you no 
small annoyance. 

Don't try to do two things at once. Distraction is as bad in 
dining as in book-keeping. A great many hundred years ago 
King David said, "My tears have been my meat day and 
night." Why, the old man couldn't have done better had he 
lived in the broad light of the nineteenth century. If the 
grand old patriot felt as bad as that about it, he did just right 
not to eat anything. Had he eaten anything, what could he 
have expected except an attack of indigestion which would have 
made things just so much the worse as the depression of phys- 
ical disorder is worse than the depression of mental perplexity. 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 157 

No doubt when, at last, he dried his tears, he ate a good square 
meal and enjoyed it, and had no twinge from below the dia- 
phragm after it Follow his worthy example. If you must 
have tears, by all means let them be your meat and drink, — if 
you must have the blues, by all means make them your meat 
and drink, — if you must have business schemes which absorb 
you body and soul, by all means make them your meat and 
drink too. And it won't be long before you will come down 
your little tree like a man, and eat your dinner with gladness 
and singleness of heart ; and it will bring no sorrow with it. 
Spread your bread with butter, and not with tears or blues or 
schemes. One thing at a time. No matter how many things 
may crowd into your day, one thing at a time. Give to your 
dinner the time its importance merits. And do not start off 
down town at a rapid walk, or turn at once to your work the 
moment you rise from the table. Everybody knows that imme- 
diate mental work conflicts with the process of digestion. But 
not everyone is aware that physical exertion is equally prejudi- 
cial to the proper utilization of the food taken. Jules Virey 
demonstrated this by careful experiment. "He selected two 
curs of the same size, age, and general physique, made them 
ieep a fast-day, and treated them the next morning to a square 
meal of potato-chips and cubes of fat mutton, but, as soon as 
one of them had eaten his fill, he made the other stop too, to 
make sure that they had both consumed the same quantity. 
Dog No. 1 was then confined in a comfortable kennel, while 
No. 2 had to run after the doctor's coach, not at a breathless 
rate of speed, but at a fair, brisk trot, for two hours and a half. 
As soon as they got home, the coach-dog and his comrade were 
slain and dissected ; the kennel-dog had completely digested 
his meal, while the chips and cubes in the coach-dog's stomach 
had not changed their form at all ; the process of assimilation 
had not even begun." At the very shortest, half an hour for 
the meal ; at the very shortest, half an hour after eating for 



158 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

that siesta marked by the cessation of all effort, the period of 
passive satisfaction which follows the normal performance of 
every function known to the organism. Then a gradual starting 
of the wheels of work again . He is a poor engineer indeed, 
who starts his engine with a jerk. 

But in importance towering over all other agencies employed 
in the attainment of physical culture, and occupying a bad pre- 
eminence in frequency of neglect, stands exercise. The appli- 
ances of civilization, from the printing-press to the elevated 
railway, all increase the demand made upon one's nervous and 
intellectual systems, and at the same time diminish the calls for 
physical exertion in business pursuits. Every electric wire 
stretched between two poles, intensifies the head-work and les- 
sens the hand-work of business. Edward Everett Hale speaks 
of it as "the civilization under the tyranny of the telegraph, the 
■ ail, the telephone, and the door-bell." The calls upon our 
nme are so incessant, remorseless, imperative, that we give up 
the idea of systematic exercise as being wholly out of the ques- 
tion. We absolutely "haven't time". Succumbing to what 
we are pleased to consider the inevitable, we respond to the calls 
for intellectual exercise made unceasingly from morning till 
night, and neglect to render unto our physical man the things 
which belong to it, because its demand is not pressed so impor- 
tunately, until we begin to lose our physical balance. 

The head grows hot, the feet cold, the sleep disturbed, the 
stomach cranky, the bowels constipated, mental work becomes 
a rasping drudgery because of the frictions in the physical 
machinery — yet we run on recklessly until we "break down," 
the unconfessed victims of our own blindness and folly. 

"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; 
Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all." 

Our years of ripest usefulness are before us, yet we come to 
these years almost wrecks ; and whatever we succeed in accom- 
plishing must be done under protest and in weakness, instead 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 159 

of in the manly strength which should be ours. It is painful to 
note the extent to which the work of American scholars and Amer- 
ican business men is done in physical distress. How refreshing 
is it to meet, occasionally, with such an exception to this rule of 
physical weakness, as that good methodist bishop, whose phys- 
ical presence was thus described in a tribute of rhyme at his 
golden wedding a short time since. 

"Throughout the land his works do praise him; 
It took a dozen states, at least, to raise him ; 
His Titan limbs of stalwart brawn consist, 
And every inch a loyal Methodist. 
His spinal column, never known to lurch, 
In times of pressure can hold up a Church. 
His ample breast (excuse the seeming boast) 
Is broad and generous 'as the Pacific Coast/ 
The seat of power, as wide as you may make it, 
You need not doubt he'll fill the chair, or break it." 

The solid worth of a good physique and the endurance which 
such a physical balance brings with it, was well set forth in an ad- 
dress of Professor Huxley's to the prize-winners at a university 
contest. He said : — " So, boys, let me tell you that it has given 
me great pleasure to come among you to-day, and to hand you 
the prizes you have won for proficiency in all sorts of intellectual, 
and some physical exercises ; and, as I have perfect confidence 
in the judgment and in the justice of those who award these 
prizes, I am sure that you deserve the honors you have obtained, 
and I offer you my hearty congratulations upon them. You 
have a right to take an honest pride in your success, and I 
would even excuse a little vanity, if the fit is neither too strong 
nor too long. But though self-satisfaction, if one comes by it 
honestly, is a very good thing in its way, the whole value of 
success, here as elsewhere, does not lie in self-satisfaction. In 
the present case 1 should say that the chief value of success lies 
in the evidence which it affords of the possession of those fac- 
ulties which will enable you to deal with those conditions of 



160 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

human existence into which you will be launched, to sink or 
swim, by and by. 

" Let me appeal to your knowledge of yourselves and of your 
school-fellows. What sort of fellows are those who win prizes? 
Is there in all the long list which we have gone through to-day 
the name of a single boy who is dull, slow, idle, and sickly ? 
I am sorry to say that I have not the pleasure of knowing any 
of the prize-winners this year personally — but I take upon 
myself to answer, Certainly not. Nay, I will go so far as to 
affirm that the boys to whom I have had the pleasure of giving 
prizes to-day, take them altogether, are the sharpest, quickest, 
most industrious, and strongest boys in the school. But by 
strongest, I do not exactly mean those who can lift the greatest 
weights or jump farthest — but those who have the most endur- 
ance. You will observe again that I say take them together. 
I do not doubt that outside the list of prize-winners there may 
be boys of keener intellect than any who are in it, disqualified 
by lack of industry or lack of health, and there may be highly 
industrious boys who are unfortunately dull or sickly; and there 
may be athletes who are still more unfortunately either idle or 
stupid, or both. Quickness in learning, readiness and accuracy 
in reproducing what is learned, industry, endurance, these are 
the qualities, mixed in very various proportions, which are found 
in boys who win prizes. 

" Now there is not the smallest doubt that every one of these 
qualities is of great value in practical life. Upon whatever 
career you may enter, intellectual quickness, industry and the 
power of bearing fatigue are three great advantages. But I 
want to impress upon you, and through you upon those who 
will direct your future course, the conviction which I entertain 
that, as a general rule, the relative importance of these three 
qualifications is not rightly estimated, and that there are other 
qualities of no less value which are not directly tested by school 
competition. A somewhat varied experience of men has led 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 161 

me, the longer I live, to set the less value upon mere clever- 
ness ; to attach more and more importance to industry and to 
physical endurance. Indeed, I am much disposed to think that 
endurance is the most valuable quality of all; for industry, that 
is the desire to work hard, does not come to much if a feeble 
frame is unable to respond to the desire. Everybody who has 
had to make his way in the world must know that while the 
occasion for intellectual effort of a high order is rare, it con- 
stantly happens that a man's future turns upon his being able to 
stand a sudden and a heavy strain upon his powers of endur- 
ance. To a lawyer, physician, or a merchant it may be every- 
thing to be able to work sixteen hours a day for as long as is 
needful without yielding up to weariness. Moreover, the 
patience, tenacity, and good humor which are among the most 
important qualifications for dealing with men are incompatible 
with an irritable brain, a weak stomach, or a defective circula- 
tion. If any one of you prize-winners were a son of mine and 
a good fairy were to offer to equip him according to my wishes 
for the battle of practical life, I should say, 1 1 do not care to 
trouble you for any more cleverness ; put in as much industry 
as you can instead ; and oh, if you please, a broad, deep chest, 
and a stomach of whose existence he shall never know any- 
thing. ' I should be well content with the prospects of a fellow 
so endowed." 

Such testimony to the value of physical endurance, carries with 
it great weight, coming as it does from one whose opportunities 
for observation have been the best, and who, at the same time, 
is removed from that suspicion of an undue bias engendered by 
long study of the physical man, which so often discounts the 
utterances of the physician. . 

In the whole list of illustrious men who, in the accomplish- 
ment of their Herculean tasks, have found a tower of strength 
and effectiveness in their own nobly-built bodies, no one stands 

(11) 



162 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

nearer to our thought than James A. Garfield. During the 
long weeks through which the wounded man battled for his life, 
we learned much of his physical nobility which had before been 
unknown to us. But I would not draw any conclusions from 
those tragic days as to the value of an iron physique ; for you 
and I trust that we shall be spared just such a call as was this, 
for an oaken frame. I would draw the lesson from the military 
career, where the real burden of work and responsibility is hid- 
den from the public view ; the long years of public service in 
state and national halls of legislation, where the real work, and 
it is piled mountain high, is not on the floor of house or senate 
making speeches, but in the committee room, and a thousand 
other places, wholly concealed from public gaze. It was he 
who said, "Battles are never the end of war, for the dead must 
be buried, and the cost of the conflict must be paid." So is it 
in the daily battle of life. If our dinner does not pay the cost 
of the morning's conflict, or if our night's sleep does not bury 
the dead of the preceding day's battle ; if each day's transac- 
tions show a debtor balance in the physical expense account, 
then are we piling up a war debt which we cannot repudiate, no 
matter how slyly we may say to ourselves that we mean to do so, 
and which will some day compel payment with either our lives 
or our usefulness. Then are we carrying on a business which 
will end in bankruptcy just as certainly as double entry book- 
keeping gives a correct statement of our condition. 

Nor does our loss of the proper physical balance wait to show its 
repugnant symptoms until we have reached middle age. Presi- 
dent Eliot of Harvard, said, a few years ago, of a majority of 
those coming into that university, that they had " undeveloped 
muscles, a bad carriage, and an impaired digestion, without 
skill in out-of-door games, and unable to ride, row, swim or 
shoot." Yet the prevalent opinion is amazingly unanimous 
that, if the student at college should receive the physical train- 
ing which alone would make him a symmetrical man and give 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 163 

him that even physical poise insuring, not only mental balance 
•as well, but also mental freshness and vigor, his scholarship 
must inevitably suffer thereby. How universal is the belief 
that the college boy who pulls an oar, or swings a bat, or kicks 
a foot-ball, does nothing but that, and is altogether ignorant of 
the Greek verb, conic sections and metaphysics. And yet I 
am sure that a little investigation of the facts in the case would 
convince the most prejudiced that such is not the result. 

While I would not have every student a professional oarsman, 
nor every proud participant in "Junior Ex." a professional 
athlete, I do greatly regret that the percentage of our college 
boys who take part in the college athletics, is so small. And 
being willing to take the extremest ground which an opponent 
could ask me take, and stake the issue upon the college boating 
of to-day — which in reality is only a single branch of athletics, 
but is that branch popularly supposed to be most unfavorable to 
scholarship — I wrote one of Yale's best oarsmen, whom I had 
known from boyhood up, and whose success at the oar 1 knew 
had not been purchased at the expense of his Homer, asking him 
to give me some account of college athletics, their regimen, and 
their effect upon the mental as well as the physical make-up. I 
take the liberty of inserting his reply, though it was intended 
for my eye alone, and not written with any thought of its pub- 
lication. , 

New Haven, Conn., October 23d, 1882. 
My Dear Doctor : — Yours of the 17th turned up here yesterday and I take 
the first opportunity to answer. As I am warmly interested in all of our athlet- 
ics, and in rowing in particular, it is always pleasant for me to write or talk 
about them, and I am always glad to see information in regard to the subject 
become a little more general. However, I think I can only promise you to 
give you what facts I have as to the subject, leaving to you the task of getting 
them into the form you desire if they are such as may be of use to you. The 
facts are, a " victorious athlete and good student " has very little time to 
spare^ and just now I am trying to be just that. Moreover, knowing nothing 
■as to the general character of your production, the character of your audi- 
ence, and the connection which this part bears to the rest of what you have 



164 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

to say, I should need much more self-conceit than I now have, to think my 
performance would not be an utter failure. 

Of course you must know that there are among college men perhaps more 
systems of training than there are colleges. The facts seem to be, that until 
recently even professionals have really known next to nothing on the subject, 
while the knowledge of college men, derived from sort of traditional ideas 
as to what professionals would do in the same circumstances, has been prac- 
tically of no use. Lately, however, the best professionals have given up 
their old ideas as to feeding men on raw beef, without enough water to sat- 
isfy a child, and have adopted what might be called a common sense theory 
which amounts to just this : a man may eat any good wholesome food, hav 
ing plenty of variety, eating what he pleases and as much as he pleases so 
long as it is nothing positively hurtful, such as pastry and things of that 
character. 

In this question of diet the colleges have followed this example, and are 
now perhaps inclined to be a little too loose in their system. 

In this question of diet there is a difference in the different branches of 
athletics, also. Rowing requires more endurance than either foot- ball or 
base-ball, and so here they are more strict. Foot-ball comes next, and in 
base-ball there is very little restriction. 

Of course you will realize that it is practically impossible to regulate the 
diet of from ten to fifteen men (these are the numbers we keep for our teams), 
unless the men are together. This makes a training table necessary, where 
the men all board together. The time for which this is kept up varies accord- 
ing to the length of the season of each branch of athletics, being perhaps a 
month in foot-ball, and the last term, in the case of rowing and base-ball. 

Besides this, the rowing man is expected to be careful as to matters of diet 
at least all the time after the Christmas vacation. 

From what has been said as to the principle on which this dieting is car- 
ried on, you may get a very correct idea as to the bill of fare. The base-ball 
work is not severe enough to create in the men a desire for much more than 
the ordinary quantity of meats and solid food. Foot-ball is harder work, 
and therefore the food consumed must be more substantial, and probably 
greater in quantity than is ordinarily the case. 

Rowing is the most severe exercise — so severe, that in my own case I have 
often noticed a loss of three pounds, by actual weight, during a practice row 
of five or six miles, while I have quite frequently exceeded this— and there- 
fore men require plenty of the best meats, steaks, chops and roast beef being 
the favorites, three times a day. 

Perhaps smoking, drinking, etc., come in this connection as well as any- 
where else. 

The base-ball team do not object to moderate smoking, and a glass of ale. 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 165 

or something of that kind occasionally, though they, of course, forbid any 
intemperance in either way which would unsteady a man's nerves and unfit 
him for the excitement of a hard game. 

Foot-ball is more strict, and during strict training forbids all use of 
tobacco, and all drinking. 

Ilowing also makes this rule. In the fall the rowing men may indulge some- 
what, but for the last six months they are expected to give up such things 
entirely. Ale may be given rowing men to keep them from over-training, 
but they are to take nothing of the kind unless it is put on the training table 
for them by the proper authority. 

All improper intercourse with women is strictly prohibited in all athletics 
during training. 

The hour for retiring is fixed in all the various teams, and is adhered to . 
strictly in rowing, with less strictness in foot-ball, while there is still greater 
laxity in base-ball. The rule is generally to be in bed by eleven. As the 
work grows harder, and the event, whatever it may be, comes nearer, the 
men need and take more sleep. I myself often sleep from half -past nine till 
seven, after a hard row in the spring. 

I believe I have taken up everything except the actual work, though some- 
thing may be omitted. 

The foot-ball season is in the fall, ending at Thanksgiving, and so it is 
natural to take that up first. 

It is self-evident that the contest for which you are working determines 
the amount of training to be done. One of our Rugby foot-ball games is in 
two innings of forty-five minutes each. Therefore, in preparing for such 
games, the purpose is to play every day a little longer than the time required 
for a regular game. It is thought that this is as much as is necessary for 
acquiring the skill that must be obtained, and that it will give the men the 
endurance required for a game. It amounts to an hour and a half of hard 
ruaning and scuffling. Besides this, in the gymnasium the men are given a 
fast run of perhaps a mile and a quarter, with frequent spurts, to give them 
good wind. 

This is the regular daily work. On Wednesday and Saturday, as often as 
possible, a game with an outside team is arranged, as this is the best kind of 
preparation. In the daily work the university team practices against a team 
taken from the other players in college, approaching as nearly as possible to 
a regular game. On the day before an important game the team are allowed 
to rest. If the team go away to play a game, they are kept quiet in the hotel 
until the time for playing, to keep them in the best possible trim. 

I think that the training in the other large colleges is substantially the 
same as in ours. As we have lost but one game in five years, we do not feel 
the necessity of any change as yet. 



166 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

From Thanksgiving till Christmas Ihc base-ball and foot-ball men have a 
vacation. 

As soon as the college assembles after the Christmas vacation, the base- 
ball training begins. During the winter they are of course confined to the 
gymnasium. Here their work consists in regular ball practice and general 
exercise. In the ball work, they pitch, catch, throw and bat in their "cage,' 
as they sometimes call their wire-netting enclosure. Here they can do good 
work in the individual positions, but there is no chance for playing together 
as a team, or for developing the things like fine base-running, which can only be 
acquired by actual playing. 

Their general gymnasium work consists in practice on various systems of 
weights, principally for the arm and body muscles, and a short, sharp run of 
perhaps three-quarters of a mile. 

To finish up they take a bath, not a cold shower, though. 

As soon as the weather permits they begin out-door work. This is daily, 
and consists in games every Wednesday and Saturday, and on other days, in 
practice in batting, base-running and fielding, such as is customary in all 
cases where a nine is systematically trained. The time spent in actual work 
is probably not more than one hour per day, except when games are played. 

During the last four years college nines have improved very rapidly, and 
now they may hope to play a good game against any team. During the last 
two seasons I remember eight games in which our nine played League teams, 
the Chicagos, Detroits, Bostons, Providences, and Worcesters, and of these 
games our nine won four. 

At present our rowing training begins early in October and continues, with 
the interruption of three weeks at the Christmas vacation, until about July 
1st, when our race comes off. 

Every crew must vary its training to suit the race for which it is preparing. 
Our race is four miles, straightaway, eight-oared crews, with cockswain, in 
best and best boats. * Therefore we are required to do different work from 
what a four needs for a mile race, for instance. 

As much of our work is done on the water as is possible. In the winter of 
1879-80 our crew was only in the house about two weeks. Such a winter is 
an exception, however, and I suppose that two months, at least, would be a 
fair average time for gymnasium work. 

Within the first week in the fall the daily work of the crew amounts to 
perhaps five miles of hard rowing with no stop except the time necessary to turn 
around and start on the pull home after the row out. This distance is gradu- 
ally increased to perhaps eight miles a day before going into the gymnasium. 
With us the work is all done in shells, paper or wooden, with the best coach- 

* " Bestand best boats7 r is a phrase used more by professionals than amateurs* 
meaning that each party may use any boat propelled by oars, getting the best they can 
without restriction. Sometimes races are rowed in which boats of a certain kind must 
be used, as barges. But * best and best boats " allows anything. 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 16T 

ing we may be able to get in college. After the row there is a bath, all 
through the year. 

As soon as ice makes rowing impracticable, we resort to the gymnasium— 
or gym, as the college man invariably calls it. 

Here our work is a little general gymnastics, a smart run of from a mile 
and three quarters to three miles or over, averaging perhaps two miles and a 
quarter, and a row on our hydraulic machines, rigged exactly as our boat is, 
followed by the usual bath. Perhaps I should have said before that there is a 
running track in the gym. As soon as we can, we go back to the water and 
increase our rows gradually. Later in the Spring we take two spins daily, 
doing in all from ten to twelve miles a day. The shorter row, when two 
are taken daily, is easy rowing, and is only for form, or good style. During 
our work in the Spring we are coached daily by the most competent graduate 
we can find, from a steam launch which we keep to follow the crew for this 
purpose. 

After our examinations are all over, we go to New London, Conn., where 
ojur races are held, taking a cook, waiters, etc., and hiring a house there on 
the river bank. Here we put on the finishing touches, and row our race. 
As often as is possible in the Spring we row over the course on time to test our- 
selves. 

Now as to the results. To specify them directly would be difficult if not 
impossible. 

In regard to their effects, however, I think nothing would be gained by 
trying to separate the different branches of athletics. For, though they are 
very different, they all have the same tendencies and may be classed together 
under the head of physical exercise. 

As to their influence upon our general physique, I can only speak from 
my general impressions, for I have no very accurate statistics even in my own 
case. I may say, that during my four years here I have seen perhaps fifty 
rowing men, in class and university crews, and three times as many base-ball 
and foot-ball men, and while I could mention numerous cases in which there 
has been a marked improvement in physique, I cannot remember a single 
instance in which there has been an accident through over exertion, or one in 
which the man has even seemed to fail to develop, while such a thing as loss 
of health or deterioration has been unheard of. The rowing is the only work 
severe enough to cause any danger of over-training, and in this, the fear of 
such a danger and its effects in the race has always led to an error in the 
other direction in the crews of which I have heard, or in which I have rowed. 
In general it seems to me that the physical effects of our rowing, or other 
sports, are very much the same as those in any hard work, as farming, except 
that we have an advantage in working more intelligently. 

I can tell you particular results in my own case. I came here weighing 



168 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

160 pounds, troubled some with headaches, and so soft and fat that I could 
not row or run a mile. Now, when out of hard work, I weigh 200 pounds, I 
don't have one headache a year, I can take a four or five mile run in the gym. 
if any one wants to lead, and I had the reputation of pulling one of 
the strongest oars in the boat last year. The last time I weighed myself 
before the race I weighed 184 pounds, stripped. I measure, stripped, five feet 
ten and one-half inches in height, forty inches round the chest, and I've for- 
gotten the rest. Down on the farm I can make the Yankee farmers weary, 
too. Ask Will. 

As to effects on the intellect, I am rather at sea. It is impossible to 
get statistics, and they are necessary for any general conclusions. I have 
been somewhat interested in this myself, and have come to about this con- 
clusion. 

1st. The time required by the athletics leaves time enough for study. I 
proved this by experiment. 

2d. As far as I can judge, a man's scholarship is, if anything, benefited by 
athletics. I come to this conclusion by observing men to see if there is any 
fall in the scholarship of men who first do nothing in athletics, and then 
take them up. 

Then I notice the scholarship of men while they are engaged in athletics, 
and compare it with their work in that part of the year when they are free 
from this tax on their time. 

Thirdly, I compare atheltic men with non- athletic men of the same style; 
i. e., a society man who is also an athlete, and a non-athletic society man. 

Making these comparisons as fairly as I can, I conclude that the benefit 
which President Carter of Williams suggested to me that we athletic men 
should get from our regular work, in its strict discipline tending to help in 
other things, is really obtained, and that athletics tend rather to help men 
than to hinder in scholarship. 

As to any effect on the character of the mind itself, I feel still less compe- 
tent to speak. However, though I have never heard the other boys discuss 
this subject, I can say that, in my own experience, since I have rowed I have 
never undertaken a hard piece of work, farming, studying, or anything else, 
without having thoughts of hard work in rowing come into my head, and so 
it seems more certain to me, each time I thiuk of it, that any man who wishes 
to put into his work a determined spirit of fight that has no right to give up 
until both boats are over the line, can find no better school in which to 
acquire a spirit of courageous perseverance than in one or two races where his 
muscles have all ached, his breath seemed all gone, his mouth has been parched 
and his heart has nearly deserted him— where it seemed impossible, but where 
he accomplished the impossible and held on— and won. A man remembers a 
race like that, and it helps him every time he is in a hard place. 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 169 

What I said as to relative scholarship of course implies my opinion as to 
its affecting the mind's capacity for work. 

Now, as to the sexual system, and how it is affected by our system of 
training, I am prepared to say very little. What I can learn from the boys, 
however, has tended to confirm my impression that the opinion you sug- 
gest in your letter is correct. Of course there are no statistics among the 
boys here as to the frequency of seminal leakages during training and at 
other times, but there seems to be a very general opinion among the men on 
the crew, at least, that during our hard work such discharges are much less 
frequent. I am inclined to think that this is correct, because what is reasonable 
seems to be supported by actual facts, — but I am so ignorant in regard to such 
subjects that I do not wish to be positive. 

I think I have now given you as good an idea as I can of our athletics, 
and the general character of their effects, so far as I know anything about it. 

I am sorry I cannot put it into the form which you wish, but I think you 
will agree with me in believing I could not do it. I have tried to be full 
enough to give you a comprehensive idea of the subject, so that you 
can write or speak on it intelligently, even if you have no other sources of 
information. * * I have given my own experience a 

prominence that may seem rather unnecessary and unbecoming, the reason 
being that I am most familiar with my own experience. * * 

I am in the Law School, studying and rowing, and enjoying myself generally. 

* * Yours Very Sincerely, 



I know of no one who has a better right to speak positively, 
or who is in better position to speak authoritatively as to the 
merits or demerits of physical exercise, than Archibald 
Maclaren, of the University Gymnasium, Oxford. In his work 
on "Physical Education," he makes the following able and 
earnest plea for reasonable care of the body through physical 
culture : 

" Exercise alone of all the agents of growth and develop- 
ment can be regarded in an educational light — alone is capable of 
being permanently systematized and administered as a means of 
progressive bodily culture. There are rules and regulations to 
be observed in the administration of the other agents, to suit 
age and season, and habits and occupations ; and on the judi- 
cious observance of these much of the bodily health of all, but 



170 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

especially of the very young, the middle-aged, and the 
old, depends ; but it is to Exercise almost exclusively that 
we must look as the means of actual physical culture during the 
greater part of the period of growth and development. In a 
treatise on Physical Education theretore, Exercise claims the 
most important place — claims it, however, not more from its 
own value than because it is so much more liable to be misun- 
derstood, misapplied, or neglected than any of the others. 
Air, food, and clothing are all, in a measure, familiar to every 
one ; and although with many the modus operandi of each may 
not be understood, still their results are evident and immediate ; 
and where error in their application is committed, it is usually 
either from some inevitable cause of hindrance, or from willful 
infringement of laws of which ignorance cannot be pleaded. 
Thus the dweller in the crowded city is quite aware that it 
would be better for him and for his children to breathe the pure 
air of the country ; but his avocations determine for him the 
place of his dwelling. The insufficiently-fed knows well that it 
would be better for him and for those for whom he has to pro- 
vide to have abundance of nourishing food ; but his poverty 
determines for him his diet. On the other hand, the intemper- 
ate needs no other reminder than the bodily discomforts he 
experiences to know that by him one of the agents of health 
has been abused, and its laws broken : he was conscious of the 
fault on its committal — the penalty was also foreseen. But. 
this is not the case with Exercise ; in its nature and in its influ- 
ence it is still greatly misunderstood, and although the evils 
which arise from its abuse or misapplication are really as direct 
and as serious as those which follow the non-observance or mis- 
apprehension of any other agent of health, their origin is often 
less apparent, and they follow less suddenly on the committal 
of the fault : the punishment is as sure and as severe, but not 
always as clearly traceable to the transgression. Error here in 
a great majority of cases may arise from actual want of knowl- 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 171 

edge. It is comprehended at once that all the other agents 
may and should be modified to meet the wants, and to suit the 
age, the health, and the habits of individuals, but not so with 
Exercise. Persons of the most opposite bodily condition and 
capacity will without question or consideration undertake the 
same physical exertion, although to one the effort may be 
slight, to the other exhaustion irretrievable. A vague feeling 
may be entertained that Exercise is a thing to be taken, but to 
what extent, at what time, or in what manner, are points upon 
which few really consider it necessary to possess any adequate 
information. The regular urgent reminders which follow on 
the neglect of the other agents are missing here ; or when they 
do occur it is only as they affect some other one of these. For 
want of Exercise, appetite fails — for want of Exercise, comfort- 
able bodily warmth is not sustained — for want of Exercise, 
refreshing sleep is not obtained — but these, reminders though 
they be, come indirectly and, as it were, incidentally only. 
They speak not with the imperative voice of hunger or thirst, 
or cold, or oppressive heat, or fatigue, or unpleasantly affected 
respiration. Unfortunately also there are many persons who 
have what might almost be called a natural disinclination to. 
bodily exertion, that is, a disinclination to physical effort, 
inherited or induced by circumstances attending the comforts, 
the luxuries, and the occupations of civilized life — a disinclina- 
tion which, unless combated at the very outset, grows stronger 
by indulgence ; for Exercise is determined by what a man does, 
not by what he possesses or can obtain. It is from these and. 
many other reasons hereafter to be noticed, such as extreme 
mental employment and the engrossing cares and absorbing 
anxieties of business, that Exercise in the present day holds its 
all-important place among the agents of health, and the laws 
which regulate its administration their all-important office in 
promoting growth and development. 

" What then, as I have already asked, and do not now for 



172 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

the first time endeavor to answer, is Exercise ? What does it 
do ? and, How does it do it? 

"Exercise may be defined as muscular movement produced 
by muscular contraction, by which indeed every motion of the 
living organism is accomplished. This property of contractility 
with which muscular fibre is endowed, and which, so far as we 
know, is shared by no other constituent of the body, is to some 
extent described in the term — being the power of contracting or 
shortening the space between its two extremities. 

"The entire muscular system has been primarily divided 
into voluntary and involuntary muscles. The first, compris- 
ing all those which are subject to the will, form the bulk of the 
muscular system ; they are mainly distributed over the frame- 
work of the bones, their office being to move the part or parts 
to which they are attached. The second comprises those over 
which the will has little or no control, but which are stimulated 
to action by some other agency, each muscle or class of muscles 
having its proper stimulus ; these are placed chiefly within the 
cavities of the body, and are employed in the vital processes 
of respiration, digestion, circulation, etc. It is with the volun- 
tary muscles that we have now particularly to deal. 

"Exercise I have defined as muscular movement; but it 
must be movement of force sufficient to engage the energetic 
contraction of the muscles employed. Here we are touching 
upon the most important principle in the entire subject under 
consideration, namely, the destruction and renovation of the 
tissues of the body which it is the object of Exercise to accom- 
plish. 

" Our material frame is composed of innumerable atoms, and 
each separate and individual atom has its birth, life, and death, 
and then its removal from the 'place of the living.' Thus 
there is going on a continuous process of decay and death 
among the individual atoms which make up each tissue. Each 
atom preserves its vitality for a limited space only, it is then 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 173 

separated from the tissue of which it has formed a part, and is 
resolved into its inorganic elements, to be in due course elimin- 
ated from the body by the organs of excretion. These processes 
are greatly influenced by the activity of the bodily functions. 
Every operation of the muscles or nerves involves the disinte- 
gration and death of a certain part of their substance. We 
cannot lift a finger, we cannot perform the slightest movement, 
without causing a change in certain of the atoms which com- 
pose the muscles executing the movement, in those of the 
nerves conveying the stimulus which directed them to contract, 
and in those composing the nerve centers in which the stimulus 
originates ; and this change involves their decay and death . 

"The loss then of the body, and of each part of the body, 
being in relation to its activity, a second process is necessary to 
replace the loss, otherwise it would rapidly diminish in size 
and strength, and life itself would shortly cease. This repara- 
tive process is performed by the nutritive system, the organs of 
which convert our food into blood — liquid flesh (chair coulante), 
as it has been called — which in itself contains, and in its never- 
ending circulation bears to each tissue, the material for the 
replacement of all waste and for the building up of all addi- 
tions . And as this material is borne along through channels 
permeating every part of the organism, each part, by a law 
incomprehensible but unerring, selects from it and appropriates 
that particular pabulum which is fit for its special use, and that 
only. At every point of the human body is this law in unceas- 
ing operation — activity, a loss of vital power, disintegration, 
decay and removal — to be met by a replacement of substance 
and a renewal of vital power. And as the disintegration of 
any part is hastened by its activity, so by an equally unerring 
law is the flow of blood, bearing the renewing material, 
increased in that part ; and again by a law equally unerring 
and ever operative, the worn-out particles are cast into this cur- 
rent in its backward course, and conveyed to organs whose 



174: THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

function it is to eliminate them from the body. And during 
the period of growth, and, within certain limits, until the full 
attainable physical capacity of the individual has been reached, 
the new will ever exceed the old, so that a gradual increase in 
bulk and power will be obtained. And the strength of the 
body as a whole, and of each part of the body individually, is 
in relation to the frequency with which these atoms are changed; 
and the strength of the bod} T as a whole, and of each part of 
the body individually, is thus ever in relation to its newness. 

"Exercise, then, as we have seen, is the chief agent in the 
destruction of the tissues ; but it is also the chief agent in their 
renovation, inasmuch as it quickens the circulation of the 
blood from which the whole body derives its nourishment, the 
tide on which is brought up all fresh material, and on which is 
borne away all that is effete and useless — brought up and borne 
away most rapidly in those parts which are being most rapidly 
employed, where disintegration is most rapidly taking place. 

"lam here purposely narrowing my subject, and limiting 
my observations to the process of circulation only as it affects 
the nutrition of the muscles ; but all the systems of the body, 
and every process connected with its growth and development, 
or influencing its health and strength, are also proportionately 
affected by the acceleration of the circulation of the blood by 
Exercise. 

"But besides muscular movement, true Exercise possesses 
another ingredient, which may be termed resistance. The vol- 
untary muscles are made to do more than merely to move the 
parts to which they are attached. Man is placed on the earth 
to labor, to toil, to overcome and remove material obstacles 
innumerable. Everything which floats upon the ocean or is 
built upon the land is the work of his hands — in simple fact, 
has been constructed by the contractions of his voluntary 
muscles; these muscles were made therefore not merely to 
enable him to move v but to do this and to carry his burden too. 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 175 

They were made in their action to encounter and overcome 
resistance in every movement; and being created for this, their 
health and strength will be developed and sustained in propor- 
tion to the fidelity with which this their design is remembered 
and observed. Exercise, which is voluntary labor, must resem- 
ble actual labor in all its physical essentials, if it be desired to 
obtain from it the physical advantages which actual labor 
bestows ; without resistance there can be no full demand for 
muscular contraction, no full call therefore for material disinte- 
gration, no full requirement therefore for material renewal 
involving proportionate increase of bulk and power; for, as we 
have seen, the strength of the body, and of each part of the 
body, is in relation to its youth or newness. 

" These are the chief essentials of Exercise when viewed in 
connection with the voluntary muscles ; but it is also an essen- 
tial of true Exercise that the movements of these muscles shall 
be of speed or force sufficient to quicken the breathing ; in other 
words, to increase the action of the involuntary muscles engaged 
in the processes of respiration and circulation. During active 
exercise the act of breathing becomes greatly accelerated ; each 
inspiration is larger in volume, and each follows each in quicker 
succession, than when the body is inactive. This is a most im- 
portant feature of exercise, for with every breath a load of the 
wasted material of the body is given up by the blood in the 
form of carbonic acid, etc., and its place supplied by life-giving 
oxygen from the surrounding atmosphere. To make this all- 
important process plainer, let us glance at the mechanical action 
of breathing. 

"On the requirement for air, the besoin de respirer, being 
experienced, the inspiratory muscles contract and lift the 
osseous frame-work of the chest, thus increasing its diameter 
from side to side and from back to front ; while at the same 
time the large arched muscle (the diaphragm) forming the con- 
vex floor of the cavity also contracts, and in doing so its fibres 



176 THE PHYSICAL xlAJLAJTOE. 

are straightened, and its elevated surface ±s consequently 
depressed, increasing the diameter of the chest from above 
downwards. As this takes place the air rushes down the 
trachea, or windpipe, and passes at once into the lungs, which, 
it fills out in every direction. But all muscular action is inter- 
mittent ; the contractile effort accomplished, the reaction begin sj 
the inspiratory muscles relax and a second set of muscles, the 
expiratory, antagonizing those which lifted the walls of the 
cavity, now contract, and the muscles of the abdomen, antago- 
nizing the diaphragm, also contract, and the air is expelled by 
the aperture through which it entered. This is, in outline, the 
process of ordinary effortless breathing ; but in the forced respi- 
ration of energetic exercise, and especially of exercise calling into 
action the muscles of the upper limbs and the upper region of 
the trunk, many of the voluntary muscles may also be employed 
in the process of respiration. 

1 ' I have stated that the involuntary muscles are prompted to 
action each by its proper stimulus ; and the heart is stimulated 
by the presence and augmentation of blood within its cavities. 
Thus, the instant that any act of exercise begins, a considerable 
number of voluntary muscles are put into rapid employment > 
the contractile action of these muscles impels the blood in their 
veins onwards towards the heart, venous blood being greatly 
dependent on muscular action for its circulation ; and the heart, 
stimulated by its presence, energetically contracts, ejecting its 
contents, and the blood is flushed along the pulmonary artery and 
distributed throughout its ramifications in the lungs. As the 
exercise continues, wave on wave comes up from the heart, 
each driving before it its predecessor, — out of the lungs, along 
the pulmonary veins, back to the heart, where it is again rapidly 
admitted and as rapidly ejected; for the heart is a double 
organ, performing the double office of propelling the blood 
through two distinct channels of circulation — through the one 
for its aeration in the lungs, through the other, when so aerated, 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 177 

for the nourishment of the whole body. Out of the heart then 
it is again ejected, out by the great trunk arteries, and along 
their innumerable branches, to complete the round of the sys- 
temic circulation. But neither heart nor lungs, nor vein nor 
artery, throughout the double circulation, is a passive agent in 
its progress ; for though the heart is the great agent of propul 
sion, the whole circulatory channels possess a certain amount of 
contractile power, and are endowed with a degree of elasticity 7 , 
and may in fact, in this respect, be regarded as hollow muscles 
actively engaged in regulating the moving current within them; 
and their health and strength, and functional ability, are pro- 
moted by the same agencies, as they are subject to the same 
laws, as those which influence the condition of the rest of the 
body. 

" On these two powers, muscular and respiratory, depends the 
ability to perform all bodily exercise. The first involves the 
contractile force of the voluntary muscles employed ; the second 
is more complicated, involving the contractile force of the heart, 
the condition of the lungs to perform their function, the size and 
shape of the chamber in which these organs are contained, and 
the contractile force of the respiratory muscles, voluntary and 
involuntary. 

" Such in brief is Exercise, such the ends which it accom- 
plishes, and such the manner of their accomplishment ; namely, 
the destruction of the tissues, the hastening of the decay and 
death of every part coming within its influence ; but also the 
speedy removal of all waste, and the hastening forward of 
fresh material for its replacement ; and in doing this it attains 
three distinct but co-relative results. 

" 1. It increases the size and power of the voluntary muscles 
employed. 

"2. It increases the functional capacity of the involuntary 
muscles employed. 

(12) 



178 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

u 3. It promotes the health and strength of the whole body 
bj increasing respiration and quickening circulation. 

" Our first record of physical training, that is to say, of any 
system adopted and practiced with the single view of improv- 
ing and cultivating the physical resources, is to be found in the 
competitive exercises of the early Greeks and Komans ; and it 
has been said that we have lost as much by the discontinuance 
of the system of bodily exercise of these nations as we have 
gained by our knowledge of physiological science. This is one 
of the aphorisms which men are fond of repeating, but which 
will not stand criticism. No price can be set upon our knowl- 
edge of physiological science, no estimate can be formed of its 
value. The extent, the importance, and the value of the sys 
tern of bodily exercise practiced by the Greeks and Romans we 
can appraise exactly — can gauge with almost mathematical 
accuracy, because we know entirely of what it consisted and for 
what purpose it was organized and maintained. We can there- 
fore tell, by a comparison of the want experienced with the 
thing produced to meet the want, if the object desired were 
accomplished ; and we can do this chiefly, if not wholly, by the 
light of physiological science, which alone has revealed to us 
what Exercise is, and what its suitable administration can 
accomplish in the human frame. 

"It is generally admitted that this system of bodily training 
— unguided, undirected as it was by a ray of science deserving 
of the name — accomplished the object desired. How did they 
who framed it, thus groping in the dark, grapple with and hold 
fast by the truth ? By the observation of results. This was 
the lamp which guided them in the selection of the exercises 
which formed their system of bodily training. They observed 
that the strength of the body, or of any part of the body, was 
in relation to its muscular devolopment, and that this develop- 
ment followed upon, and was in relation to, its activity or 
employment. They did not know that man's material frame 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 179 

was composed of innumerable atoms, and that each separate 
and individual atom had its birth, life, and death ; and that the 
strength of the body as a whole, and of each part individually, 
was in relation to the youth or newness of its atoms. And they 
did not know that this strength was consequently attained by, 
and was retained in relation to, the frequency with which these 
atoms were changed, by shortening their life, by hastening 
their removal and their replacement by others ; and that when- 
ever this was done by natural activity, by suitable employment, 
there was ever an advance in size and power, until the ultimate 
attainable point of development was reached. They simply 
observed that the increased bulk, strength, and energy of the 
organ or limb was in relation to the amount of its employment, 
and they gave it employment accordingly, 

"They must have observed, however, that this did not apply 
in equal degree to all kinds of muscular employment, and that 
it applied most directly to those where the action was rapid and 
sustained. They did not know that this rapidity of muscular 
contraction and expansion was the chief agent in quickening the 
circulation of the blood, from which the whole body derived its 
nourishment; the tide on which was brought up all fresh 
material for incorporation into its tissues, and on which was 
borne away all that was effete and waste — brought up and 
borne away most rapidly in those parts which were being most 
rapidly employed — for they did not know that the blood was a 
moving current at all. They only observed that exercises con- 
sisting of rapid muscular movement were most conducive to 
strength and activity ; so, without exception, the exercises 
composing their system were of this description. 

"But they must have observed also, that there was a form of 
physical employment which did not give physical development, 
or yield its natural fruits of health and strength ; and that was 
the slight, effortless occupations of many art-callings and crafts. 
They did not know that without resistance to be overcome there 



180 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

could be no full demand for volition, no full call therefore for 
material disintegration and renewal, with proportionate increase 
in bulk and power. They simply observed that development 
was in relation to the quality as well as to the quantity of exer- 
cise — that where energy was exacted in the practice, energy was 
the fruit of the practice ; so for their system they selected exer- 
cises where energy was voluntarily called forth in the highest 
possible degree. 

" Other essential constituents of exercise owed their recogni- 
tion to the same source — the observation of results. They 
observed that during certain kinds of physical exertion the act 
of breathing became greatly affected, that each inspiration was 
larger in volume, and that each followed each in quicker suc- 
cession, than when the body was inactive. This they must 
have observed, although they may have viewed it but as a draw- 
back to physical ability, a hinderance to be overcome, or in the 
same light in which our schoolboys now view it — as a condition 
of ' bad wind ' or ' internal fat ; ' for they could not know that 
in every breath they breathed, a load of the wasted material of 
the body was given up by the blood and its place supplied by 
the life-giving oxygen from the surrounding atmosphere ; and 
that just in proportion to the rapidity and energy of muscular 
movement during the exercise was the rapidity and volume of 
the current of the blood rushing through the lungs ; and that, 
therefore, for this current of blood to be aerated, proportion- 
ately large and proportionately rapid was the current of the air 
respired ; and that, following the natural law of development 
being in relation to employment, the lungs themselves were 
strengthened by this increased activity. They, probably, sim- 
ply observed that the power to sustain thi3 accelerated process 
of respiration was obtained in proportion as the exercises which 
excited it were practiced ; so exercises which required the sus- 
taining of accelerated breathing received an important position 
in their system. 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 181 

" They must have observed, further, that energetic physical 
exertion and quickened respiration caused the skin tf» be suf- 
fused with moisture, and that this gave instant relief from a dis- 
comforting sense of heat. They did not know that this aug- 
mented heat was in a great measure caused by the accelerated 
breathing — the fanning of the fire which is ever burning in the 
living frame ; and they did not know that this moisture was 
water drawn from the blood and poured out over the skin's surface, 
in order that the discomforting heat might be with it eliminated. 
They did not know that the skin itself was a covering of mar- 
vellously woven network, presenting millions of interstices and 
aperatures, and that each of these aperatures was the open 
debouche or outlet of a duct or tube which, striking deep its 
convoluted roots among the underlying strata of blood-vessels, 
separated from the accelerated currents what might prove inju- 
rious to the health of the body, and poured it forth through 
these myriad mouths ; but they observed that these skin-exuda- 
tions proved a powerful aid to the aquisition of permanent 
health and strength, and notably so to the health, elasticity, 
purity, and beauty of the skin itself. So, without exception, 
every exercise in their system is of that kind which readily 
contributes to this result. 

" Finally, fchey must have observed, that just in proportion 
to the amount of clothing worn during exercise, were the pro- 
cesses of respiration, and the evaporation of this moisture from 
the skin, retarded. They did not know the structure or func- 
tions of either lungs or skin; still they saw that they both 
acted together, were stimulated to activity by the same means, 
and by the same means were sustained in functional ability ; 
and that during physical exertion hinderance to both was in pro- 
portion to the amount and weight of the garments worn ; so 
they simply, while performing their exercises, reduced their 
clothing to the minimum, and thence called their system of 
bodily training 'Gymnastics.' 



182 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

"Thus, then, by the observation of results were the ancients 
guided with sufficient accuracy in the comprehension of the 
chief features, and in the estimation of the relative value, of 
certain modes of bodily exercise ; and thus they were enabled 
to choose, on assured grounds, those exercises which were most 
suitable for the system which they desired to organize. They 
desired a system specially applicable to individual culture, indi- 
vidual exertion, individual excellence, individual distinction ; 
a system which should cultivate personal courage, presence of 
mind, and decision ; a system possessing the utmost limit for 
individual effort, presenting the fullest opportunities for per- 
sonal display and personal distinction. Therefore was the hand 
laid upon all exercises of high competitive effort — wrestling, 
boxing, throwing the discus, racing on foot, on horse-back, and 
in chariot. The system was as simple, as practical, and as ser- 
viceable as the Greek shield or the Roman sword. 

" The system of bodily training of Greece and Rome had then 
but one aspect, one aim, one object. It was designed to practice 
the youths of the country in all exercises tending to qualify 
them for the exigencies of war, as war was then pursued, as 
campaigns were then made, as weapons were then borne, as 
battles were then fought. Other object, other aim, other 
aspect, had it none. 

" But in those days, as in our own, there must have been 
men of unsound constitution and imperfect growth, from original 
weakness of organization, or from illness, ignorance, neglect, 
accident, and other causes. What sytem of bodily training 
was framed for their behoof? None. Here the observation of 
results was unequal to the requirement. They could reach no 
higher — they aimed no higher— than the production of a series 
of athletic games, suitable to the young, the brave, the active, 
the strong, the swift, and the nobly born. 

" Our knowledge of physiological science is something more 
valuable than this. A system of bodily exercise which should 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 183 

give added strength to the strong, increased dexterity to the 
active, speed to the already fleet of foot, is not what is alone 
wanted now. It is not to give the benefit of our thoughts and 
observations and the fruit of our accumulating information to 
the already highly favored, and to them only, that we aim. 
On the contrary, it is the crowning evidence of the Divine 
origin of all true knowledge, that in benefiting all within its 
influence, it benefits most bountifully those whose needs are the 
greatest. 

" In our days, as of old, the race is still to the swift and 
the battle is still to the strong, but the battle of life now is 
waged with the brain for weapon, and the race is the high pres- 
sure competitive efforts of memory and mind. These are 
the great and all-absorbing struggles of our times, a ' struggle 
for life ' as hard, and involving results and transformations as 
unerring and inevitable, as ever were traced in the origin of 
species. 

" It is health, however, rather than strength, that is wanted 
now — that is the great requirement of modern times, with mod- 
ern men, at non-military occupations. Bodily power, activity, 
and stamina for the endurance of protracted fatigue, are still at 
this day as much the real want of the soldier as they were in the 
days of Xenophon, of Caesar, of Napoleon. But the purposes and 
practices of war are not the all in all with us as they were with 
the Greeks and Romans; nor are the whole of our able-bodied 
men under arms, nor the whole of our youths preparing for con- 
scriptive battalions, as were the youths of Germany and France 
in the last century. Our own army, scattered over the whole 
globe, and encountering the severities of every clime, claims 
but a fraction of our men ; a small portion only of our youths 
are in uniform: but other occupations, other habits, other 
demands upon mind and body, advance claims as urgent as 
ever were pressed upon the soldier in ancient or modern times. 
From the nursery to the school, from the school to the college 



184 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

or to the world beyond, the brain and nerve strain goes on- 
continuous, augmenting, intensifying. Scholarships Junior and 
Senior, Examinations, open Fellowships, speculations, promo- 
tions, excitements, stimulations, long hours of work, late hours 
of rest, jaded frames, weary brains, jarring nerves — all intensi- 
fied and intensifying — seek in modern times for the antidote to 
be found alone in physical action. These are the exigencies of 
the campaign of life for the great bulk of our youths, to be en- 
countered in the schoolroom, in the study, in the court of law, in 
the hospital, in the asylum, and in the day and night visitations 
to court and alley and lane ; and the hardships encountered in 
these fields of warfare hit as hard and as suddenly, sap as in- 
sidiously, destroy as mercilessly, as the night-march, the scanty 
ration, the toil, the struggle, or the weapon of a war-like 
enemy. 

' ' Yes, it is health rather than strength that is the great 
requirement of modern men at modern occupations ; it is not 
the power to travel great distances, carry great burdens, lift 
great weights, or overcome great material obstructions ; it is 
simply that condition of body, and that amount of vital capacity, 
which shall enable each man in his place to pursue his calling, 
and work on in his working life, with the greatest amount of 
comfort to himself and usefulness to his fellow-men. How 
many men, earnest, eager, uncomplaining, are pursuing their 
avocations with the imminency of a certain break-down ever 
before them — or with pain and weariness, languor and depres- 
sion ; when fair health and full power might have been secured, 
and the labor that is of love, now performed incompletely and 
in pain, might have been performed with completeness and in 
comfort. 

"Let it not from this be inferred that I consider health and 
strength as in any manner opposed to each other ; on the con- 
trary, they are most intimately allied, and are usually by the 
same means and in the same manner obtained. Yery closely 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 185 

ure they connected, but they are not the same, and a man may 
possess either without the other. For strength may be due to 
the great force possessed by one system of the body, such as 
the muscular ; or great force in one part of the body, such as 
the trunk or the limbs ; but health is the uniform and regular 
performance of all the functions of the body, arising from the 
harmonious action of all its parts — a physical condition imply- 
ing that all are sound, well-fitting and well-matched. Young 
minds do not look far enough into life to see this, distinction, or 
to value it if seen ; they fix their eyes longingly upon strength 
— upon strength now, and care not for the power to work long, 
to work well, to work successfully hereafter, which is Health . 
Therefore it is fortunate that the same means which usually 
give strength give health also ; although the latter may be 
jeopardized by irregular efforts to obtain the former. Again, it 
is fortunate that this most desirable of all earthly possessions 
should spring from the regular and uniform development of the 
body as a whole, not from the extreme development of any 
special part. Yast strength of limb may be found united to 
a comparatively feeble trunk, a massive trunk to dwarfish limbs, 
great muscular force to delicate lungs. These alike reveal 
local power and local weakness, and these are not the develop- 
ments which yield Health. 

"Let both man and boy therefore cultivate strength by every 
available means, but let it be general not partial strength. The 
Battle of Life requires for combatant the whole man, not a part; 
and the whole, too, in as good condition as can be brought into 
the conflict . 

"There is no profession, there is no calling, or occupation in 
which men can be engaged, there is no position in life, no state 
in which a man can be placed, in which a fairly developed 
frame will not be valuable to him ; there are many of these, 
even the most purely and highly intellectual, in which it is 
essential to success ; essential, simply as a means, material but 



186 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

none the Jess imperative, to , enable the mind to do its work. 
Year by year, almost day by day, we see men falter and fail in 
the midst of their labors — men to whom labor is life, and idle- 
ness is death — men who with a negation of self and self-com- 
fort even unto martyrdom, devote themselves to great purposes 
and great works, and before their completion fail ; men who 
run the life-race with feet winged with the purest faith and 
hearts full of the noblest hope, and who, with the goal in view, 
falter and fail ; and all for want of a little bodily stamina — 
a little bodily power and bodily capacity for the endurance of 
fatigue or protracted unrest or anxiety or grief. Strongly has 
this been ever impressed upon me, more strongly than ever of 
late years, but never so strongly, never so sadly, never in its 
every aspect so impressively, as in the death of a late states- 
man, eminent alike for the height of his intellectual attain- 
ments, the nobleness and purity of his aspirations, and the 
gentleness and almost feminine sweetness of his character. He 
sank in early manhood, with his great career just begun, his 
great works but outlined by his hand ; to other hands was left 
their accomplishment, to other hearts their fulfillment, and all 
for want of a little of that bodily stamina, a little of that mate- 
rial hardihood, a little of that power of enduring fatigue, which 
he was, even as he failed, seeking to extend, through the means 
of this system of bodily training, to every soldier in the land. 
" This need of such a preparation for the coming struggle of 
manhood in these times of high civilization and intellectual 
advancement being then so apparent, what is the great hin- 
derance to the due training of the body 1 It is to be found in 
the too exclusive cultivation and employment of the mind ; in 
the long and continuous hours of physical inaction with extreme 
mental effort and inordinate mental stimulation, which the 
requirements and educational demands of the present day often 
involve ; in the overlooking or ignoring of the fact that the 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 187 

« 

body also has urgent and distinct claims to culture and employ- 
ment. 

" Are these two then opposed ? Is a healthy, energetic, and 
vigorous frame incompatible with a powerful and vigorous intel- 
lect % We know that it is not so. Science and experience alike 
confirm the fact that the two are not only compatible, but that 
the one is in every case an aid to the other. That the intellect 
can rarely attain, or if it already possesses, can rarely long 
retain a commanding height when the bodily functions are 
impaired ; that the body itself will be at its best and most 
worthy condition when its claims are most fully shared by men- 
tal occupations, and that the healthy condition of the mind, 
produced by sufficient and natural employment, will react most 
favorably upon the body, can never be doubted for a moment ; 
yet we continually find the one warring upon the other. We 
shall find the reason of this in the overlooking of the laws 
which govern both mind and body. 

" The mind acts through a material organ, the brain, upon 
which it is entirely dependent, and which, in common with the 
other organs of the body, is subject to a constant decay and 
constant renewal from the same vital fluid ; these processes 
being accelerated and its strength and vigor consequently aug- 
mented in proportion to its activity. But in common with other 
organs also, if this activity is carried on beyond certain limits, 
its waste exceeds nutrition, its strength gives place to weakness. 
The mind then is dependent upon the blood for its material sup- 
port, and its healthy action is dependent on its receiving an 
adequate supply of healthy blood. * Moreover, the organ of 
the mind being subject to the same laws as the other organs, 
requires similar alternations of rest and action to maintain it in 

* This is manifested in numerous everyday occurrences, and one proof of 
it, frequently coming under my own notice, may be seen in youths whose 
upward growth is very rapid and demands all the resources of the system ; 
in which case the mental powers occasionally become temporarily enfeebled, 
recovering rapidly as soon as the unusual demand upon the nutritive powers 
has ceased. This is especially the case when nutrition from insufficient or 
improper diet is inadequate. 



188 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

its natural state of efficiency ; and if either of these states be 
deficient or in excess, the brain, and consequently the mind, will 
deteriorate. If therefore the cultivation or exercise of the mind 
be neglected, it will of necessity be weakened in precisely the 
same manner as the other organs are weakened by insufficient 
use, will deteriorate both in strength and vigor and the power 
of enduring fatigue. If, on the other hand, the exercise of the 
brain be excessive, beyond the point where the nutrition is 
equal to the waste, it will suffer in the same way and to the 
same extent as the other organs would do. 

"It would be well if parents would ask themselves at the out- 
set what is their object in the training of their children. ' They 
wish them to be thoroughly educated,' would probably be the 
response. Then let their first care be that the body shall be 
healthy and fairly grown. Let them take care that the mind 
shall receive that amount of culture which will develop and 
strengthen it, but let them pause at that point where exercise 
and application are merging into fatigue ; so shall it attain its 
utmost attainable point of strength and vigor, so shall it reach 
its highest attainable capacity of enduring exertion and effort. 
Year by year will it be found to increase in these attributes, 
and in the aftertime, if a call for extra exertion should come, it 
will not come upon it unprepared. And more than this, the 
body having received its due share of cultivation also, will 
itself be gaining year by year, and while contributing to the 
health of the mind by its own health, will be able to endur e 
successfully its allotted amount of labor, in whatever position 
of life, under whatever sun, it may toil. Nor let parents 
imagine that their sons who are destined to what are, chiefly 
or exclusively, sedentary professions, need not so much prepar- 
ation for their coming life. The clergyman, the physician, the 
barrister, are often called upon to endure even as much bodily 
fatigue as the soldier or the sailor, and the numerous prema- 
ture failures among all these classes show how needful such 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 189 

preparation is and how little the necessity has been recognized. 

" And jet how often do we find parents stimulating by every 
imaginable method, and by every suggestive expedient, the 
mental cultivation of their children ; inciting them to take from 
the hours that should be given to physical exercise and to phys- 
ical recreation, and to devote them to study. What is it these 
parents are seeking ? Is it the future welfare of their children, 
or is it (let us examine it closely) the gratification of their own. 
pride in their children's superior talents and intellectual attain-- 
ments I It has been said that the pride of parents in their chil- 
dren is, of all kinds of pride, the most excusable ; but even 
our pride in our children may have many phases, and that 
phase cannot be a purely unselfish one which would sacrifice 
ultimate health and happiness for temporary distinction, praise, 
and admiration. 

u The very interest evinced in the premature development of 
intellectual ability is dangerous to the young, appealing as it 
does to one of the most powerful stimulants in the youthful 
mind, the love of praise and notoriety. Boys soon learn to 
love the excitement which such an artificial mode of life pro- 
duces, and cease to feel any interest in, or any desire for, the 
active pursuits usually so dear to youth. Others there are thus 
forced into abnormal advancement, who work on reluctantly to 
the end, but once emancipated, the distasteful task is forever 
abandoned. Which of these is most deserving of our pity, the 
unnatural young hermit, who in his books alone takes delight,. 
or the too natural little Arab to whom books and book-learning 
have become a thing of disgust? Most parents have at some 
time or other felt a pang of alarm at seeing their child turn 
with carelessness from the food which they knew to be necssary 
to its well-being. I have frequently experienced the same feel- 
ing at seeing a child turn with indifference or dislike from the 
sports and pursuits of his companions to creep back to his 
books ; and also as much alarm, mingled with anger — for falsa 



190 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

and cruel must have been the teaching which caused the dislike 
— at seeing the healthy and strong child turn with repugnance 
from his books. * 

"Earnestly however as I desire to advocate the cultivation of 
the bodily powers, 1 would guard against its being thought that 
I would neglect cultivating to their full capacity the mental 
ones. That would only be erring in another direction, and 
although a safer one in some important respects, important as 
regards present comfort and future health, it is still altogether 
erring ; and the right path is broad and open and plain, free 
alike to all who will look for it with unprejudiced eyes. The brain 
also requires systematic and ample exercise to develop its 
attainable powers, and where there exists no unusual weakness, 
its reasonable culture can scarcely begin too soon or be pursued 
too steadily. Putting aside the necessity in these days for a 
N '<$hly comprehensive education, a degree of mental culture 
proportioned with careful hand to the age and mental and phys- 
ical capacity will be found to act with advantage to the latter, 
and the relish and zest for bodily exercise, which supplies the 
most valuable of all incentives, will be increased by it. The 
giving of a large part of the day to exclusive bodily occupations 
is, for those who are to take a place in the educated world, an 
equal error — a rejecting of the advantages of civilization. The 
body makes no such exacting demands. Let it not therefore be 
inferred that I would undervalue the purely mental work of 
schools, nor let it be for a moment imagined that I would advo- 
cate a less active, a less energetic, a less earnest pursuit of it. 
On the contrary, it is because I value it at its highest price, and 
because I would sustain in their most ardent efforts its youth- 
ful votaries, and enable them in the aftertime to reap to 
the full the fruit of their labors, that I plead for a more dis- 

* ' My boy works seven hours a day regularly, sometimes eight/ said a 
lady to me composedly. The boy had just turned his eighth year. Four 
languages besides his own, Latin and Greek, French and German, with His- 
tory, Geography, Arithmetic, and Instrumental Music ! Were his headaches 
real or sham I wonder? 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 193 

criminating indulgence in occupations purely mental and seden- 
tary at this period of life. For there is no error more profound, 
or productive of more evil, than that which views the bodily 
and mental powers as antithetical and opposed, and which 
imagines that the culture of the one must be made at the 
expense of the other. The truth is precisely the reverse of 
this. In the acquirement of bodily health mental occupation is 
a helpful, indeed a necessary, agent . And so impressively has 
this been proved to me, that in cases where the acquisition of 
bodily health and strength was the all-in-all desired by the 
parent, and the one thing longed for by the child (and in some 
cases almost despaired of by myself), I have been careful to 
allot and mark out a proportion of mental with bodily occupa- 
tion. 

"Schools, large and small, are yet to be found where the 
exclusive bookworm is an object of admiration and wonderment, 
and master and usher unite in holding him up as an example, 
and point him out with pride to every visitor. But every sen- 
sible man feels for him but commiseration, and regards him but 
as a warning; for he looks from the boy to the man, and from 
the schoolroom to the outer world, with its rude encounter and 
its stern and prolonged struggle, and he sees how unfit are such 
a frame and such habits for the task ; — a warning too which 
urges less considerate minds to an opposite extreme ! c My 
boy shall cultivate his bodyS says an astonished but not admir- 
ing father ; and the resolve is a wise one, for well worth culti- 
vating are the varied powers of the human body ; and beautiful 
it is, and wonderful as beautiful, to watch the fair and free 
development of the frame of a shapely child : but the emphasis 
on the terminating word was meant to indicate that an exclusive 
culture should be given to the body, and that its twin sister, its 
co-ordinate companion, the mind, would be left to shift for her- 
self, disowned, excluded from her rightful share in the educa- 
tional inheritance. 



192 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

"Now this must bo error, error arising from ignorance of our 
very selves. Mind and body should be viewed as the two well- 
fitting halves of a perfect whole, designed in true accord mutu- 
ally to sustain and oupport each other, and each worthy of our 
unwearied care and unstinted attention, to be given with a ful- 
ler faith and more reverent trust than they have who would 
argue that He who united in us our twofold nature made them 
incompatible, inharmonious, opposed. No, no; even blind 
and blundering man does not yoke two oxen together to pull 
against each other. Mind and body can pull well together in 
the same team if the burden be fairly adjusted. 

"' Brute force,' 'brute strength,' are terms we constantly 
hear used, despisingly, of bodily power when it is designed to 
contrast it with mental ability ; just as we hear the holder of an 
opposite opinion, and possessor of opposite acquirements, talk 
sneeringly of the ' mere scholar. ' 

" But they who speak thus err equally in their praise and in 
their blame. They seek to sever what were bound together in 
the very planning, if one may so speak on such a subject, of a 
living man ; they disunite them, and then complain that the 
dissevered halves are of unequal value; they take the one 
and cultivate it exclusively, and neglect the other exclusively, 
and then make comparisons between them ; forgetting that 
their fitness, each for the other, lay in the fair nurture of both, 
and in their mutual cultivation. Thus we hear of men who 
think out great thoughts, and work out great conceptions, and 
who yet in their material frames have not the stamina of a 
healthy child ; just as we see the opposite — men with frames so 
strong and so hardy and enduring, that incessant toil can 
scarcely fatigue, and rest alone seems to tire them, yet of men- 
tal calibre so small that the intellect seems scarcely adequate to 
provide for the safety of the mortal machine confided to its 
care. But either condition is equally the result of error, and 
either development is equally a monstrosity, although the 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 193 

former is less repellent than the latter, and less humiliating to, 
our intellectual aspirations. 

"But to return to the school-bo j. It is not alone in a nega- 
tive form, by exemption from extreme mental efforts, that the 
growth and development of his body is to be secured. Active 
bodily exercise, at regular and frequent intervals, must be 
obtained, and for this special provision must be made with as- 
serious a purpose as for any school duty. 

"All Exercise may be classed under two distinct heads,. 
Recreative and Educational. The first of these embraces all 
our school-games, sports and pastimes ; a long and valuable 
list, such as no other country can produce, and upon which 
every Englishman looks with pride and affection, for they 
mould the characters as well as the frames of our youths. But 
valuable as these exercises are — invaluable as they are — it will 
be at once seen that not one of them has for object the develop- 
ment of the body, or even the giving to it, or to any part of it, 
health or strength : although all of them, in a greater or less 
degree, undoubtedly have this effect, it is indirectly and inci- 
dentally only — the skill, the art, is the first consideration. And 
in this, as purely recreative exercise, lies their chief value, 
the forgetfulness of self, the game being all-in-all. 

" Out of this great good there arises, I will not say an evil, 
but a want, a defect. The parts of the body which have to exe- 
cute the movements of such exercises are those which can do 
them best, not those which need employment most. Use gives 
facility of execution, and facility of execution causes frequency 
of practice ; because we all like to do that which we can do 
well : and thus inevitably, because based on the organic law of 
development being in relation to activity or employment, cer- 
tain parts of the body will be cultivated and become developed 
to the exclusion of the others. So certain is this the case, that it is 
as easy to tell from the general development of any youth what 

(13) 



19 i THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

recreative exercise he has practiced when at school, as it is to 
tell from the conformation of the chest whether a man pulls on 
the bow or the stroke side of his College boat, when he comes 
to the University. It will be found that the lower limbs and 
right arm have the lion's share of the employment or exercise 
in almost every one of our recreative exercises. They largely 
employ the lower half of the body, and where the upper limbs 
are employed, or the trunk, it is almost exclusively the right side. 
These distinctive features in our national recreative exercises 
have the inevitable tendency to develop the lower half of the 
body to the neglect of the upper ; and this is most distinctly 
apparent to every eye ; the lower limbs are usually large and 
not infrequently massive, while the upper region is usually 
.small and not infrequently irregularly and imperfectly devel- 
oped, narrow, flat, and, as it were, compressible : it is, in very 
many cases, years behind the lower limbs in all that constitutes 
growth and development. Indeed, I almost daily find in my 
professional life men in whom this inharmonious development 
is so great, that the upper limbs and upper region of the trunk, 
and the lower region and lower limbs, scarcely seem to be the 
halves of the same individual. And while at any time, amongst 
the hundreds of men and boys whom I have daily under my 
care, I might find it difficult to point to one in whom this lower 
half was really faultily grown, I could with painful facility point 
to dozens in whom the upper was distorted from its proper con- 
formation. 

fcC Recreative exercises then, from their very nature, are inade- 
quate to produce the uniform and harmonious development of 
the entire frame, because the employment which they give is 
essentially partial . Where the activity is, there will be the 
development ; and if this principle be overlooked, a portion of 
the body only will be cultivated and the neglected portion will 
fall far behind the others in strength, in activity, in dexterity. 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 195 

and in endurance, for the simple reason that it will be less 
abundantly nourished. 

" Recreative exercise in sufficient amount is usually in itself 
sufficient to maintain health and strength after growth and 
development are completed, but it does not meet the many 
wants of the rapidly-changing and plastic frames of youths 
spending a large portion of their time in the constrained posi- 
tions of study ; taking shape almost day by day from day-to-day 
occupations. Hence the necessity for a system of Educational 
Exercises. It is the office, as it is entirely within the reach, of 
systematized exercise to modify the growth and distribute the 
resources of the body so that each particular part shall have its 
legitimate share, and so to increase these resources that each 
part of the growing frame shall have its wants supplied. 

"The one great reason why systematized exercise is not 
always appreciated or recognized is, that its special nature and 
object, its susceptibility of gradation to meet the requirements 
of individuals, and its effect upon the different structures of the 
human frame, are imperfectly understood. Its effects upon any 
part but the muscular system are seldom taken into considera- 
tion ; its vast influence over the other systems, and especially 
on the organs employed in the vital processes of respiration, 
circulation and nutrition, seldom appreciated. The evils aris- 
ing from this imperfect comprehension of an agent so impor- 
tant to the healthy growth and development of the young are 
manifold and increasing — increasing in the ratio of man's intel- 
lectual advancement; because so long as it is believed that 
systematized exercise gives but muscular power, gives that and 
that only, few of those engaged in purely intellectual pursuits 
would care to cultivate it, even could they do so without effort, 
and fewer still would give to it that effort which its attainment 
demands. And that for this simple reason, that great muscu- 
lar power would be to a man so situated comparatively without 
value. 



196 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

u But if it can be proved that this muscular power is but one 
result of systematized exercise, and that not its highest — if it 
can be shown that properly-regulated exercise can be brought to 
bear directly upon the other systems of the body, and especially 
upon the delicate and important structures which encase and 
contain the vital organs, and on whose fair and full development 
the health and functional ability of these organs must greatly 
depend through life, then such exercise takes another rank, 
becomes as valuable to the man who works with his brain as to 
him who works with his hands, and will be sought for with a 
desire proportionate to his intelligence, because it will enable 
him to prolong and sustain his labors with safety to himself and 
increased value to his fellow-men. But this culture should be 
obtained in youth, during the period of the body's growth, 
when every organ and every limb and every tissue and every 
bone are advancing to occupy their ultimate place and position — 
while all is plastic and moving, changing and capable of being 
changed. This is the time for all culture, mental and physical, 
but most emphatically so for the latter. 

" G-et the strong limbs and shapely frame, and a little, a very 
little, will keep them so ; get the strong heart and ample lungs 
set in the fair-proportioned and elastic chest, and a little, a very 
little, will keep them so — not more than the busiest life can 
spare, not more than the gravest mind would seek for mental 
recreation and beguilement — -a daily walk or ride, an occasional 
break into the country with gun or fishing-rod or alpenstock. 
But if these are no more than sufficient for the healthy and the 
strong, what hope, what chance remains for those who have 
been allowed to grow up feeble and imperfectly developed? 
How can they expect to encounter the wear and tear, the 'jar 
and fret ' inevitable in the path of every working man ? 

u There are many forms of mal-growth, more or less grave, 
to be seen in every school, all demanding rectification, all sus- 
ceptible of being rectified during this period of life by systema- 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 197 

tized exercise. I would instance particularly pigeon-breast, or 
undue prominence of the breast-bone, accompanied usually by 
flatness of the ribs of the upper region of the chest. I have 
been able to trace this mal-formation of chest to several causes, 
such as tight clothing during infancy and childhood, and in 
many instances to the straining coughs which attend what are 
familiarly called children's complaints, i. e. Hooping Cough, 
Measles, Dentition, etc. Hollow-breast, which is the obverse 
conformation of Pigeon-breast in front, accompanied usually by 
the same flattening of the ribs. This is usually produced by 
causes similar to the preceding. Drooping shoulders, suffi- 
ciently expressed in its name, and produced by shoulder-straps 
or any arrangement 6f bands or bandages which confined the 
action of the shoulder-joint in childhood. Stooping, which at 
the same time implies such a manner of carrying the head and 
neck and upper portion of the trunk, as that they are not in a 
line with the rest of the column of the body — the chief evil 
consequence attending the position being the depression of the 
upper part of the the thorax in front. With these may be 
named some of the forms of Spinal Curvature, often proxi- 
mately due to weakness of the dorsal muscles or to inordinate 
and unregulated growth. Eapid growth itself, if unattended by 
relative development, is not only in itself an evil, but is the 
source of many others. It is no uncommon thing to find a 
lad at school growing at the rate of six or eight inches in the 
year. Now it may be stated that the smaller of these numbers 
is incompatible with fair development and health ; the whole 
resources of the body are drawn in one direction, furthering one 
process, the upward growth. Nay, when this process is extreme 
it will be seen to be most intensified up the center of the body, 
an idea that might seem fanciful were it not almost daily pre- 
sented to me as a fact. • 

" Another feature of rapid upward growth is that the chest 
scarcely expands at all during the process. It will be seen to 



198 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

run up from the waist without any expansion whatever, while 
the shoulders fold round to the front, and the head stoops for- 
ward from the base of the column of the neck ; and seldom 
does a straight spine accompany such abnormal growth. I 
have known the chest actually diminish in girth — grow nar- 
rower and narrower— as if it were tightened up by the extreme 
elongation of the general frame. Now the reason for these dis- 
placements is, that all these parts are held in their respective 
places by certain muscles arranged for this purpose ; and as the 
muscles can only maintain their contractile power by frequent 
and varied exercise, they cannot do this duty if they are denied 
that which is necessary to their functional ability. This law, 
which does not apply to these parts alone, 1 but to every part of 
the body, is markedly seen in the muscles of the trunk. Were 
these duly exercised, stooping would be impossible, that is, 
continuous stooping, which involves the origin of many evils o± 
development. Because, if the muscles of this region possessed 
their proper degree of power, they would of course perform 
adequately their functions — and one of these is to keep the body 
upright. It is as useless therefore to tell a boy thus imperfectly 
developed ' not to stoop ' as to forbid him to cough when he has 
a cold, or to limp when he is lame. 

" Another abnormal form of growth, but much less frequent, 
is the opposite to the foregoing — is where the frame seems 
stunted from its natural height. This dwarfed and arrested 
growth will be found to have arisen in the majority of cases 
from some cause which interfered with the proper nutrition ot 
the general system, and it in consequence may be inferred that 
any means which will restore this condition will restore the nat- 
urally attainable capacity for growth and development in the 
frame, so far as this may yet be extended over the natural 
period of growth still remaining. * 

* A remarkable instance of this came under my observation a few years 
ago. A youth whose growth had for some time been stationary at the height 
of 5ft. 2fin., suddenly from the practice of systematized exercise began to 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 199 

" Growing to one side^ as it is called, is another form of mal- 
growth frequently to be seen, consisting of a disproportionate 
development, if not of actual elongation of one side of the 
body. I have not been able to trace this conformation to un- 
usual employment of the side where the development preponder- 
ates, as would be expected ; where I find this conformation it is 
usually with boys who take little or no exercise. No form 
of mal-growth however is more susceptible of rectification by 
skillfully-administered exercise. Like all departures from nor- 
mal growth, this evil extends beyond itself and is productive oi 
other evils. Lateral spinal curvature is one of its frequent 
results. 

" There are many other forms of mal-growth and partial 
development, all open to the curative influence of systematized 
exercise, to be seen with painful frequency in every school, less 
striking it may be, but all of importance, and all claiming the 
serious attention of those who are entrusted with the care and 
education of the young. In partial development alone — where 
no trace of mal-growth and no indication of mal-formation 
exists — an argument more powerful than any which I have 
advanced, or can yet advance, exists for the adoption of a 
clearly-defined system of bodily training at our large Schools. 
1 find that almost every youth at the time of passing from 
these to the University has, as it were, a considerable amount 
of attainable power and material capacity undeveloped; his 
body, or rather a portion of it, is in arrears in this respect, and 
as arrears a,nd as a recoverable debt the youth may fairly view it. 
A large installment of it he may obtain almost immediately. I 
find that during the first Term (two months), with properly- 
administered systematized exercise, the chest will expand, 
under all ordinary circumstances, two inches, and under pecul- 

grow at a fair and regular rate, and at the age of 21, when he went to India, 
his height was 5ft. 6£in. Another instance is that of a school-boy whose 
growth had been all but arrested from a severe fall in childhood. AJmost 
instantly systematized exercise started his latent powers of growth, and in 
nine months he nad grown 8|in. 



200 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

iar circumstances I have known it to reach double that amount. 
The general rule also is that where the chest has been neg 
lected and is consequently in arrears in development, the arms 
and shoulders will have shared the neglect and so of course 
show a proportionate want of development. And these, as 
they share in all the work of the chest — are in fact the medium 
through which the chest receives almost all its exercise — share 
in the gain proportionately. Now had these parts received an 
adequate share of employment up to this time this sudden 
development would be impossible, and it must have been 
arrears of expansion, otherwise the rate of increase would be 
sustained after the first Term, which is not the case. 

" But it is not only, or even chiefly, for the the faultily-grown, 
the imperfectly-developed, and the weak — although to these it 
is a necessity, a necessity if they are ever to be strong— that I 
plead for the regular adoption of a system of educational bodily 
exercise in our Schools. What should we think of that school- 
master, who, because a boy was apt and capable, and for his 
years well-instructed, would therefore and thenceforward leave 
him to his own resources and inclinations ? Yet in truth simi- 
lar are the reasons we constantly here adduced when physical 
culture is mentioned. We hear men say, 'AH exercise should be 
free, should be voluntary, should be left entirely to a boy's own 
choice, inclinations, and disposition.' Do we leave him the 
«ame license with the other agents of health ? his diet, for 
instance, or his hours of rest or of study % Yet none of these 
are more important to his welfare and well-being, present and 
future, than exercise. * Whatever may be the developed 
capacity of the untrained body, it is as lar from the symmetry 

* In fact there are many boys, more than one inexperienced in such 
points would easily believe, who if left to their own inclinations take no exer- 
cise at all, or take it so listlessly that the results are nil. Yet these are the very 
boys that need exercise the most of all, and their reluctance to enter upon it, 
and feebleness and awkwardness in pursuing it, is the strongest proof of their 
great need of it, the strongest proof that as boys they are not living boys' lives 
—and the boy's life leads to the man's. 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 201 

aud strength to which it may attain with proper culture, as is 
the clever but self-taught man from what he would have been 
with thorough educational training. Certain points in his char- 
acter stand out large and prominent, powerful in a given line of 
action, but others are dwarfed and stunted, and show the more 
meanly from the prominence of others. So it is with physical 
development and with physical culture: the assiduous and 
exclusive application to a favorite exercise will strengthen and 
develop the parts engaged in its practice, but this presupposes 
the neglect of the remainder, and the result in both cases, the 
mental and the physical, will be the same — inharmoniousness, 
incompleteness. 

"It might be a task not unworthy the attention of medical 
men to enquire if this partial and inharmonious condition of 
bodily development is not the cause of many forms of debility 
and also of some of the active ailments of life — the origin of 
the phrase, so pregnant with meaning, though happily not of 
literal accuracy, that 'every man has his weak part.' Indeed, 
I should be disposed to consider the man whose frame is gener 
ally and uniformly weak, safer than he whose frame is partially 
and locally strong, because the natural tendency is to gauge and 
estimate the general strength by the power of the strongest 
part. And just as the strength of a rope or chain is but equal 
to its weakest part, and just as the dependence will be on the 
general strength of the rope or chain, and its weak point be 
unnoted until its failure, so will the voice of the weak part of 
the human body be silenced by the general claims of the rest 
until the time of exposure and trial. 

k; That special provision has not been made at our Public 
Schools for the full physical training of youths has arisen from 
no carelessness or neglect on the part of the earnest-minded 
men conducting them, but simply because it has not hitherto 
been recognized as a want — as a thing to be taught or directed 
or supervised. The very phrase recreative explains the whole 



202 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

extent of the want as at present comprehended, and the provi- 
sion made to meet the want ; but to the extent of this recogni- 
tion it has been met at the Public Schools at any rate with a 
completeness which leaves little to be desired. Schoolmasters 
know from the best of all sources, practical experience, that 
unless boys have ample play-time and play-space the tone and 
energy of mind and body sink, and the school-work suffers ; 
and therefore an ample playground and a fair allowance of play 
hours, for such as will avail themselves of them, are held as 
important as a commodious schoolroom or a well supplied table. 

" England may well be proud of her Public Schools, for no 
other country has anything comparable with them, indeed has 
neither the schools nor the scholars, nor the families nor the fire- 
sides from which the scholars are drawn. For we must go far 
back — far as the home-habits and home-teaching of ancestors in 
forgotten generations — if we would get at the origin of charac- 
ter. Out of England we never find boys, only little men, 
embryo soldiers, lawyers, and doctors, with the specialties of 
their avocations sprouting upon them ; and their schools have 
nothing in common with ours, present no point of resemblance. 
The Public Schools of England are to it what the heart is to 
the human body — the center and source of its vitality and 
power, the spot through which its life-blood flows, from which 
is distributed to every spot, near or far, the young, fresh, 
bright stream to strengthen, to revivify, and to renew. 

"I have dwelt thus long upon what I conceive to be the 
necessity of providing a regular system of physical education: 
in connection with the purely mental culture of schools, because 
it is at this period of life, and it is under a school regime that it 
is most needed, and would most powerfully influence health and 
strength, present and future. And I have spoken thus 
strongly ot what I conceive to be the error and the danger of 
exclusive or undue culture either of mind or body, because it is 
at this period of life, and it is under such circumstances, that 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 203; 

the deepest and most lasting impressions are received and the 
most enduring tastes and habits acquired ; habits and tastes 
that will almost inevitably be carried into succeeding stages of 
life, and be intensified at every stage. In the University this 
is markedly the case ; here the youth who at school devoted his. 
time and his thoughts exclusively to study, leads an existence 
still more artificial, now become to him almost a natural one, 
for the law of adaptability smooths down many things that are 
irksome when first essayed . Being now free, or more correctly 
speaking, having now none to over-rule and few to advise, he 
follows his own inclinations, and this the more keenly that these 
are the same which have already guided him to distinction. 
He came up with a school reputation for ability, and this must 
be preserved, must be confirmed and extended, for school-hon- 
ors are not the fee, only the earnest-money of the bargain yet 
to be fulfilled ; its eclat is only the god-speed encouragement at 
a hopeful starting, not the congratulatory cheer at triumph 
gained. And no one knows this better than the youth himself,, 
and better than himself no one knows that not by talents alone, 
not by genius alone, was he enabled to plant his foot on the 
vantage-ground which he occupies, not by these, but by labor ;. 
and knowing this he believes that what he thought necessary 
before to win, is no less necessary now to keep ; so the old rule 
of exclusive brain-work is re-begun. All the early day he 
reads ; only in the afternoon does he go outside the College 
walls, and then only for a hurried, feverish walk — a very night- 
mare counterfeit of true exercise to the wants of a frame like 
his. His lamp is lit at the setting of the sun and scarcely 
extinguished at its rising. Does he never think when the wick 
is burned down and the oil is consumed, when the one is 
renewed and the other is replenished, does he never think, I 
wonder, as he sits with the wet towel around his forehead and 
sips his green tea, stimulating and urging the weary brain to. 



204: THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

greater effort, that the lamp of life within him needs trimming 
and renewing? 

44 What is the other extreme % For we read in the evidence 
laid before the Public School Commissioners that boys who 
expect to excel at cricket must spend seven hours a day in the 
cricket-field. ' My boy shall cultivate his body. ' Parents may 
have their wishes in this direction carried further than they 
anticipated. 'My son spends his days on the river,' writes one 
to me, a clergyman with his quiver well filled, ' his success in 
life depends on his success at Oxford, and I tremble as the 
time approaches for him to go into the Schools.' 

•'These are two extremes, but they divide not the University 
between them. The devoted bookworm and the devoted ath- 
lete are equally removed from another class — a fast diminishing 
one let it be thankfully recorded — a class which cultivates 
neither mind nor body, with whom the day is frittered away 
and the night dissipated, with whom time passes without pur- 
pose, or profit, or pleasure ; — at least such purpose as a man 
should deign to pursue, and such pleasures as he should conde- 
scend to accept. Nothing now, leading to nothing hereafter ; 
the mental advantage nothing, the physical advantage some- 
thing less than nothing. ' "Why cumbereth he the ground ? ' 
Year by year, term by term, this class is diminishing. Year 
by year, term by term, its antithesis is increasing, the true 
class, the true men, the men well worth devoting life to form, 
the class well worth devoting life to increase. For as the book- 
worm had his antithesis in the enthusiast athlete, so has the 
idler his in another type, in the man who feels that he is a man, 
a man with a body as well as a brain, muscles as well as nerves, 
and who has no intention of sacrificing either to the other, or 
■either for the other, even if such immolation could be to its 
advantage. But he knows to the contrary, he feels to the con- 
trary. He feels and knows that by .friendly rivalry and inter- 
change of labor and of rest both are benefitted ; that each may 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 205. 

be fully cultivated without infringement of the privileges of its 
companion, but rather to their mutual gain and well-being. 
Therefore he has no intention to hazard brain-fever or break- 
down of any kind from reckless mental effort, just as he has no 
intention to subject himself to the ignominy of a possible failure 
in the Schools. He has no faith in delaying until the last min 
ute and then as the phrase goes 'reading his head off.' He has. 
still less in 4 passing by dint of good luck. ' And he has least 
of all in trusting to ' natural sharpness ' which on mythical 
occasions is reputed to have 'floored the Examiners.' He 
knows that there is a given amount of work to be done in a 
given time, and he knows he can do it if he begins at once, 
and with regulated effort works steadily on to the end. And 
this he means to do, and this he does. 

"I select for illustration the Universities thus specially, as. 
they are perhaps more distinctly an extension of school-life than, 
the early stages of any of the professions or callings which, 
imply intellectual labor for actual employment; and because it 
is there 1 have been able to test by practical observation, over a 
very long period, the opinions I now venture to advance. A 
complete change in a boy's habits we occasionally see, an utter 
reversal of all antecedent tastes we sometimes hear of, but, int. 
the great majority of cases, school-habits and school-tastes. 
become consolidated and confirmed into traits distinguishing 
more advanced life. In more senses than one ' the boy is. 
father to the man.' 

"In the second stage, the one immediately succeeding 
school-life, while the upward growth, although nearly at its 
close, is still going on, an amount of benefit, second only to 
that obtainable in boyhood, may be obtained from the regular 
practice of systematized exercise. It matters not whether the 
youth be reading for a University degree, or has passed at once 
to his future profession, his frame is still growing, still chang- 
ing, still pliant, still impressionable, still liable to be checked in 



206 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

its natural development, and stunted or turned aside from its 
true proportions, by inactive, sedentary, or exclusively mental 
pursuits, and still capable of having growth and development 
powerfully stimulated, and still susceptible of being rapidly 
advanced healthward by systematized exercise. 

"As life advances, and as the frame becomes mature with all 
its structures complete and consolidated, susceptibility of mate- 
rial change diminishes, and actual gain in bodily power is com- 
paratively uncertain and slow. But there is no period of active 
life in which a man may not profit by systematized exercise if 
judiciously pursued ; only let him use the same discretion in 
this as he would in practicing any exercise of any other kind, 
abiding by the simple movements of the earlier courses, and 
leaving to lither limbs and more elastic frames those where the 
demand for effort is sudden or great. And let him not be dis- 
appointed if his progress is slow, or discouraged if he sees 
younger men passing him on the road ; he must remember 
that he starts late and it is with him at best the alternative of 
c better late than never ; ' but late is late and implies disadvan- 
tage ; he is trying to do, as well as he can, what could only 
have been done perfectly in its proper season, and that has passed 
away. The educational time of mind and body is the same, 
the growing time / but just as we see men whose opportunities 
of mental culture in early life have been small or neglected, in 
a measure retrieve the loss by later efforts, so may the neg- 
lected culture of the body also be retrieved by after endeavors, 
if judiciously and perseveringly made. 

"A most important principle in Exercise, and one which 
should ever be borne in mind, is, that it should be regulated by 
individual fitness, for the exercise that scarcely amounts to exer- 
tion in one person will be injurious and dangerous to another. * 

* A painful instance of this nature was brought before me some time ago. 
A man boasted to me that he and his son — the father a strong hardy man, the 
son a lanky and loose grown lad of thirteen years — had just walked from 
•London to Oxford in one day — a distance of nearly sixty miles. Before the 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 207 

And not only is this inequality observable among different indi- 
viduals, but, as we have already seen, the same individual may 
have parts of his body possessing special power or presenting 
special weakness. A man may have limbs capable of trans- 
porting him at the rate of four miles an hour throughout the 
day, and for many days in succession, but with heart or lungs 
all unequal to the effort . Or he may have an organization so 
frail, and a temperament so susceptible to stimulation or excite- 
ment, that the one is an abiding danger to the other. 

■"It is every man's duty therefore (nor is it a very hard one) 
to endeavor to ascertain the nature and extent of his physical 
resources for his guidance at all times, but especially when con- 
templating any special and exceptional exertion. And it is 
from the non-observance of this principle that we hear so fre- 
quently of accidents and cases of serious indisposition after 
unwonted physical effort. If any one whose habits of life have 
been of a comparatively sedentary nature, suddenly, and with- 
out any preliminary preparation, resolves to change these hab- 
its for active ones, he will unquestionably derive harm from 
such an attempt, simply because, in doing so, he is infringing 
those principles which alone can make it useful. Thus, if he 
attempts an exercise which is suited to one whose frame, from 
regular and continuous practice, is capable of performing it 
without fatigue ; if he makes a demand upon his heart and 
lungs that is beyond their power to sustain, because he sees 
another man make the same requisition upon Ms well-trained 
organs of respiration and circulation ; or if he selects a certain 
time of the day for exercise because it best suits his business 
arrangements, although his brain may be weary, his mental 
energies exhausted, and his bodily energies depressed, how can 
aught but disappointment be the result % The stomach when 
enfeebled by fasting cannot all at once digest a copious meal ; 

year was out they made another journey together — a short one this time— the 
son carried before, the father, broken hearted, following. The boy had never 
recovered from the exhaustion of that day. 



208 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

the lungs weakened by illness and in-door confinement cannot 
breathe all at once the external air ; the mind depressed by 
grief cannot all at once be trusted with the full tale of glad tid- 
ings. Yet a man does. not hesitate to change the habits of 
every organ of his body as hastily as he would change an ordi- 
nary garment, and then to express surprise and disappointment 
if benefit be not the result of the change. 

" The infringement of this principle, that { Exercise should be 
regulated by individual fitness, that it should be approached 
gradually and increased only with increasing strength, ' has been 
the cause of much perplexity and suffering. Scarcely a sum 
mer passes without our attention being drawn to some victim of 
its transgression — some one who has escaped suddenly from his 
desk or study, and, without preparation, or gradation, or pre- 
caution of any kind or degree, has betaken himself to mountain- 
climbing, shooting, boating, or some other exciting pursuit, to 
break down in the effort, or to struggle through it and sink 
down for many a month and day after it, his powers overtasked, 
his energies exhausted. Now for the brain-tired, city-worn, 
business- weary man, these are the pursuits which he would do 
best to follow, and these are the scenes among which he would 
do most wisely to mingle, did he do so in accordance with the 
dictates of reason, and in obedience to the laws by which health 
and strength are maintained. 

"This is however the abuse, not the use of a valuable cus- 
tom which is yearly extending, and extending, too, among the 
very men who need it most and to whom it will yield the most 
immediate and lasting benefit ; a custom winch if adopted 
judiciously will give a healthful fillip to the flagging energies 
of both mind and body. We call it 'change of air,' and the 
term is just as good as any other, but it very imperfectly ex- 
presses the extent of the change, for it is change of everything 
— everything we see or hear, taste, touch, or look at, person, 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 209 

place, or thing — change of everything we undertake, undergo, 
and (probably) understand. 

"But even when these holiday-breaks are made most sensi- 
bly they must not be regarded as the all-in-all of the exercise 
to be taken. A man cannot in a week or two eat sufficient food 
to supply the demands of appetite for a whole year, neither can 
he take sufficient exercise to keep his body in health throughout 
the four seasons in a summer's ramble. These mountain excur- 
sions or sea-side sojourns must be in addition to, and 
involving no curtailment of, the daily walk to or from business,, 
the daily ride to or from somewhere, or the daily employment 
with or at something; a something which will in its doing 
quicken the pulse and augment the breathing, and, if possible, 
bring the perspiration to the forehead. 

"Exercise may be favorably connected with other agents of 
health, such as bathing, in the practice of swimming ; and with 
fresh air in country ride or ramble. To men living in large 
cities — the men of course whose need of exercise is the great- 
est — it seems but a tantalization to recommend a country ram- 
ble ; but there are a great many men pining for want of proper 
exercise who do not live in large cities, and there are a great 
many others who spend but a portion of their time there, with 
whom an occasional break along the green lanes in the saddle, 
or across the meadows on foot, would be a matter of easy 
accomplishment. Men do not know what they possess in these 
cross-country by-ways, and in the power of traversing them on 
foot — the pleasure, the profit of walking — the first exercise 
enjoyed in life, the last that is freely taken. But a walk to be a 
real enjoyable exercise must be a country walk, a country ram- 
ble in fact — the antithesis to the 'constitutional' of a measured 
mile of way on the dusty road — going where fancy prompts and 
inclination leads, forgetting alike past mental labor and present 
physical effort in the successively recurring objects of interest 

(14) 



210 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

that will rise at every turn of the path. The country walk is 
an exercise entirely our own — purely English — originating, 
doubtless, in many favorably concurring circumstances, mental 
and material; such as love of country-life and country-scenes, 
of natural objects in their natural places and in their natural 
aspects, and also from that blending of the thoughtful with the 
practical elements of character which is peculiar to our own 
race ; and doubtless also to the facilities presented for indulging in 
by-path pedestrian peregrinations. I have wandered on foot 
through many a land but have never seen these dear old stile-paths 
in any but our own, nor have I ever met abroad the man who 
cared for them, or could comprekend any pleasure in this source 
■and this scene of exercise. The country walk is good for both 
mind and body, clearing the brain, and quickening the pulse by 
the same means. If a man wanted an aid to thought, a help 
"to enable him to look all round a point difficult of access, and 
.at the same time find the antidote to close mental application, 
I would say ' Yault the first stile in the first meadow and let 
your mind track out the windings of the way of your subject of 
thought, even as your undirected feet might track out the wind- 
ings of the unsurveyed path on the greensward — through 
meadow and field, through coppice or common, by river-side or 
plantation-row — the villager's right of way, secured to him by 
■ right of immemorial usage. ' For the young and for the middle- 
aged, for the one as a change from his more energetic and con- 
centrated physical exertions, for the other as a means of bodily 
exercise and mental beguilement, I know no better recreation. 
"I have spoken of the irregular and indiscrete yieldings to the 
natural instinct for physical exertion which is to be found in 
almost every nature — subdued, it may be, but not dead— and 
waking up and asserting their claims on every favorable occa- 
sion ; but the evils which come from these are not so great or 
so startling in their results, nor do they seem so blamable a 
transgression, as when these instinctive cravings are blindly and 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 211 

persistently ignored. How many, how marked and how pain- 
ful, are the proofs of this, daily recurring. How many gifted 
men have broken down and are daily breaking down with their 
life's work only half done, when they might, humanly speak- 
ing, have completed it with ease and success, had they not car- 
ried it on in utter disregard of the fact that to insure health of 
mind they must possess health of body, and at the same time 
set at naught the laws which the Creator of each has made the 
conditions of its healthful existence. 

"I do not need here to quote from the long list of men of 
every rank and profession whose useful and valuable careers 
have been brought to an untimely close by death, or more often, 
and perhaps more sadly still, by the permanent ill-health which 
baffles all medical skill and science, which springs from, and is 
at the same time a cause of, ' a mind diseased. ' Numerous are 
the instances which have fallen under my own notice of indi- 
viduals who have thus fallen victims to their own shortsighted- 
ness. One of them, long famous in the scientific world, abso- 
lutely refused to give his mind the intervals of repose which 
were seen to be essential by all who were capable of judging. 
1 The night cometh when no man can work' was his answer 
when urged to give his physical condition some attention ; and 
the night did indeed come: but his working day might, and 
would in all human probability, have been very considerably 
prolonged had he been less blind to the laws of his existence ; 
for the last years of his life were passed in the mental night of 
second childhood. 

"All this, however, it will be seen, only points the more em- 
phatically to the necessity of a regular system of physical train- 
ing at the proper time, that time being the period of the body's 
growth and development. And here I would call attention to 
the manner in which this principle has been comprehended and 
observed in the Army, where the efforts of the authorities have 
been mainly directed to the introduction of the system at the 



212 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

depots, where the raw country lads come in from the recruiting 
districts. It is not more directly valuable to the soldier at the 
outset of his career, than to those who are preparing for no less 
arduous, although very different duties in the campaign of 
intellectual life. 

u And there is yet a third direction in which it should be car- 
ried ; there is yet a third class to whom it would be a boon of 
the greatest value; to men in offices, and warehouses, and 
shops ; men whose school-life terminated in boyhood, and with 
whose school-life were relinquished or lost the habits and the 
opportunities which are essential to full bodily vigor, and who 
in their business avocations, obtain little or no physical employ- 
ment of a health-giving or invigorating kind ; men who spend 
the whole day, and, it may be said, every day throughout the 
year in the same round of occupations, and to whom not even 
the once-a-year holiday of a week or two in summer is allowed. 
To men thus employed, systematized exercise conducted on a 
rational system would be of incalculable value. 

" Gymnasia organized for the use of this class of learners, 
however, would have special difficulties to encounter, for here 
would be absent the control which would be available in school 
gymnasia, and the habitual discipline observed in military ones. 
For it must not be forgotten that there is always to be found, in 
every group of men or boys, some who are more eager for 
momentary distinction than for permanent improvement ; 
always some whose efforts, if not judiciously controlled, would 
be determined by susceptibility to excitement rather than by 
bodily power ; and where the attendance would be entirely vol- 
untary, the management of such learners becomes doubly diffi- 
cult. Indeed there is but one means of obviating such diffi- 
culty, and that is by a system where the exercises are carefully 
graduated and strictly progressive ; where every man, weak or 
strong, would work within the actual circuit of his own capacity. 
Another difficulty with, or rather drawback to these Gymnasia 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 213 

is, that the time available for recreation with men engaged in 
business is almost limited to the evening, the time least desira- 
ble for exercise, for then the bodily energies have become 
depressed, and the mental faculties subdued — the time and the 
condition when the mind is least able to stimulate the physical 
effort, and when physical effort reacts least favorably on the 
mind. But this is a difficulty that in a measure is already 
passing; social changes are from year to year taking place 
which are rendering the continuous hours of labor in many 
occupations less severe and less prolonged. Employers, it is 
found, have not been ruined, as was sagely anticipated, by the 
early closing of offices and shops, and the Saturday half-holiday 
has neither undermined the morals nor ruined the constitutions 
of those to whom it has been extended. 

"Many years ago I instituted a series of measurements, by 
which I could ascertain the state of the development of all 
pupils at the commencement of their instruction, and these 
measurements being repeated at given intervals, I could know 
the rate of their advancement. The revelations made by this 
system of periodic measurements have been such as to sustain 
me in devoting my energies to the completion and extension of 
this system of exercise. I find that to all, child or adult, weak 
or strong, it gives an impetus, a momentum in the development 
of his resources, which nothing else can give ; and which noth- 
ing can take away, because it is not a thing acquired, a mere 
mental or physical addition ; — it is the man altered, the man 
improved, the man brought nearer to the state he was designed 
to hold by the nature of his organization. And I think I can- 
not do better than give the instance of those soldiers who first 
received a course of training on this system. 

" The first detachment of non-commissioned officers, twelve 
in number, sent to me to qualify as Instructors for the Army 
were selected from all branches of the service. They ranged 
between nineteen and twenty- nine years of age, between five 



214 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

feet five inches and six feet in height, between nine stone two 
pounds and twelve stone six pounds in weight, and had seen 
from two to twelve years' service. I confess I felt greatly dis- 
comfited at the appearance of this detachment, so different in 
every physical attribute ; I perceived the difficulty, the very 
great difficulty, of working them in the same squad at the same 
exercises ; and the unfitness of some of them for a duty so 
special as the instruction of beginners in a new system of bodily 
exercise — a system in which I have found it necessary to lay 
down as an absolute rule, that every exercise in every lesson shall 
be executed in its perfect form by the instructor, previous to the 
attempt of the learner ; knowing from experience how impor- 
tant is example in the acquisition of all physical movements, 
and how widely the exercises might miss of their object if un- 
worthily represented by an inferior instructor. But I also saw 
that the detachment presented perhaps as fair a sample of the 
army as it was possible to obtain in the same number of men, 
and that if I closely observed the results of the system upon 
these men, the weak and the strong, the short and the tall, the 
robust and the delicate, I should be furnished with a fair idea of 
what would be the results of the system upon the Army at 
large. I therefore received the detachment just as it stood, and 
following my method of periodic measurements, I carefully 
ascertained and registered the developments of each at the com- 
mencement of his course of instruction, and at certain intervals 
throughout its progress. 

' ' The muscular additions to the arms and shoulders and 
the expansion of the chest were so great as to have absolutely 
a ludicrous and embarrassing result, for before the fourth month 
several of the men could not get into their uniforms, jackets and 
tunics, without assistance, and when they had got them on they 
could not get them to meet down the middle by a hand's 
breadth. In a month more they could not get into them at all, 
and new clothing had to be procured, pending the arrival of 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 215 

which the men had to go to and from the Gymnasium in their 
great coats. One of these men had gained five inches in actual; 
girth of chest. Now, who shall tell the value of these five 
inches of chest, five inches of additional space for the heart 
and lungs to work in ? There is no computing its value, no 
power of computing it at all ; and before such an addition as 
this could be, made to this part of the body, the whole frame 
must have received a proportionate gain. For the exercises of 
the system are addressed to the whole body, and to the whole body 
equally, and before this addition could be made to the chest 
every spot and point of the frame must have been improved 
also — every organ within the body must have been proportion- 
ately strengthened. 

" But I tried another method of recording the results of the 
exercises. I had these men photographed naked to the waist 
shortly after the beginning of the course and again at its close ; 
and the change in all, even in these small portraits, is very dis- 
tinct, and most notably so in the youngest, a youth of nineteen, 
and as I had anticipated in him, not merely in the acquisition of 
muscle, but in a re-adjustment and expansion of the osseous 
framework upon which the muscles are distributed. 

u But there was one change — the greatest of all — and to which 
all other changes are but means to an end, are but evidences 
more or less distinct that this end has been accomplished, a 
change which I could not record, which can never be recorded, 
but which was to me, and to all who had ever seen the men, 
most impressively evident ; and that was the change in bodily 
activity, dexterity, presence of mind, and endurance of fatigue ; 
a change a hundredfold more impressive than anything the tape 
measure or the weighing chair can ever reveal. 

"Up to this point I have spoken but of the beneficial results 
of exercise as affecting the man, without special reference to 
his professional duties as a soldier ; and I have done so pur- 
posely, because it is thus far that systematized exercise is vain- 



216 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

able to all alike,, and also because it will in a moment be seen 
that the power of the man and the serviceability of the soldier 
are inseparable conditions. Our embodied idea of energy, 
activity, and strength, is the soldier, these qualities trained to, 
made subservient to, the exigencies of his profession ; and these 
qualities are the inevitable results, the incontrovertible results 
of that system of bodily training which I advocate, because the 
system itself is based upon, and all its directions are in accord- 
ance with, the natural laws which govera the growth and devel- 
opment of the human body. Endow a man with these qualities, 
therefore, and you endow him with the power of overcoming 
all difficulties against which such qualities can be brought to 
bear, against all difficulties requiring strength, activity, energy, 
dexterity, presence of mind, tenacity, and endurance. You 
cannot limit a high qualification to a single use any more than 
you can limit the purpose to which a good coin may be applied : it 
will fetch its value anywhere and in anything. And so will strong 
muscles and sound lungs — in garrison, in camp, or on campaign, 
on the march, in the field, in the transport, in the hospital, on 
any service, in any climate. 

u The same qualities which are so valuable to the soldier are 
no less valuable to the youths who are about to enter on the 
campaign of intellectual life. It matters little whether the fight 
is to be fought out in the plains of India, or in the green lanes 
of a country parish in England. I shall never forget the reply 
of a soldier to a question of mine, when inspecting the first 
squad of men who had passed through a brief course of train- 
ing, at the gymnasium at Warley Barracks. I asked him if he 
felt any stronger for his practice ? ' I feel twice the man I did, 
Sir, ' was his reply ; on my further asking him what he meant 
by that — ' I feel twice the man I did for anything a man can 
be set to do.' 

"It was just that. The man was stronger, therefore he was 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 217 

nut more able for this thing or that thing only, but for £ any- 
thing which a man could be set to do.' 

" And the evil which is most to be dreaded, viz., strains, is pre- 
cisely the very evil which should not occur — the very evil which 
with properly administered gymnastics could not occur, — which, 
in my entire professional experience, with the thousands of young 
and old, weak and strong, who have passed through my hands, 
has never in the smallest degree occurred, — the very evil in fact 
which should be prevented from occurring in other exercises, even 
by the resultant benefits of these, because by them the parts liable 
to injury on effort would be strengthened and an inherited lia- 
bility removed ; for the universal law regulating growth and 
development is paramount here, — the natural and suitable exer- 
cise strengthens, the false or undue exercise weakens and injures. 
I repeat, falls and broken bones are not the evils to be dreaded 
from these hazardous exertions. Falls are seen, and broken 
bones can be mended ; the thing to be feared is the strain from 
sudden, unregulated, or over-stimulated effort ; an evil which at 
the time of its actual occurrence may never be known, or if 
known, concealed, for the young have a dread of such incapaci- 
tating injuries, but which whether concealed or revealed, under- 
stood or misapprehended, felt late or soon, will surely appear ; 
it may be to mar the hope and the happiness and the usefulness 
•of all the life to come. 

" Now what is the actual demand made here upon a boy's 
time % One hour per week. And this under ordinary circum- 
stances and under ordinary conditions of health and growth is 
all that is required. But this implies that it will be begun early, 
begun with school-life, and through school-life continued. 

a In these arrangements there is one point which should be 
borne in mind, namely, that the lesson should not be taken 
from what is called play-time. Nothing should be taken from 
play-time, and nothing should be introduced into play-time but 
play. The lesson should be taken from actual school-time and 



218 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

should be regarded and reckoned as actual school-work. This 
alone, as a rule, will win from boys that spirit of earnestness in 
its practice, and yield to it that unenforced but none the less 
effectual means of discipline which real work claims and 
secures.* 

i ' In our day, if gymnastics mean anything, — that is, anything 
worth the serious thought of parent, teacher, or pupil, — they 
mean a gradual, progressive system of physical exercise, so con- 
ceived, so arranged, and so administered, that it will naturally 
and uniformly call forth and cultivate the latent powers and capac- 
ities of the body, even as the mental faculties are developed and 
strengthened by mental culture and mental exercise." 

But while we may grant the benefits claimed for college gym- 
nasiums and college athletics, and while we are ready to recog- 
nize heartily the necessity for robust health and a well-formed 
body, if we are to make ourselves felt in the calling, no matter 
what that calling shall be, which we may choose for our life 
work, yet many of us can truly say that it is out of the question 
for us to take up boating ; that our circumstances are such that 
base-ball and foot-ball are impracticable ; that we have access 
to no gymnasium ; while at the same time we have frequent 
reminders that our physical status is even now become more or 
less a reproach to us, rather than a sceptre of power. It is all 
very well to show us that this state of affairs is a grievous 
one. In fact, we had had before an undefined sense of misfor- 
tune in the loss of that fine physical elasticity which makes 
every work a delight. But placed where we can have no advan- 
tages for physical training, is it possible for us to recover and 
maintain such a physical balance as has been set before us ? Let 
the answer come unhesitatingly that just this can be accom- 
plished by any man, no matter how unfavorable his circumstan- 



*This plan I pursue in my own school, and with the most satisfactory 
result, Not only does the lesson take place iu the regular school-time, but 
the boys are marked on the same scale, and in the same manner, for their con- 
duct and position in the class, as for any ordinary school-lesson. 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 219 

ces, if he has the grit, not merely to covet earnestly the best 
gifts, but to take a little trouble to secure them. There is no 
investment of time — a few moments each day — which pays a 
larger dividend upon the amount invested. The prompt and 
munificent returns are apparently out of all proportion to the 
amount of exertion on our part. As though Nature were wait- 
ing to meet us more than half-way whenever we become willing 
to abandon our treason against her. 

"Better to hunt in fields for health unbought, 
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught. 
The wise for cure on exercise depend ; 
God never made His work for men to mend." 

Just what exercise, then, shall be taken to secure this 
greatly coveted endowment of physical vigor ? 

First of all, it must be exercise that (not to some one else, 
but) to you is stimulating and exhilarating. As I write these 
lines I find this paragraph going the rounds of the papers : 

44 The cheapest and best gymnasium in the world — one that 
will exercise every bone and muscle in the body — is a flat piece 
of steel, notched in one side, fitted tightly into a wooden frame 
and, after being greased on both sides with a bacon rind, 
rubbed into a stick of wood laid lengthwise on a sawbuck." . 

That statement may do very well just for fun. It may be 
very good nonsense. What is to be deplored is that it would 
be considered, by the great majority of those under whose eye 
it might fall, as a humorous statement of what is really good 
sense. In this they make a mistake whose cost to them is often 
the difference between a forceful life and a feeble life. Seri- 
ously taken, the statement contained in this little squib is cru- 
elly false. In the same category belongs that other "joke" 
about a boy's hands blistering so much more quickly upon a 
hoe-handle than upon the bat he Swings in a game of ball. 
They are worthy oi being stigmatized as cruelly false because 
they formulate, covertly, an opinion finding daily expression in 



'220 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 



actual life, Which sets down the difference between a saw-horse 
and a game of ball as nothing more than the difference between 
work and play — as an idea merely, as solely a creature of the 
imagination. And so the boys are made to suffer by this mis- 
take, and the men of sedentary occupations make themselves to 
suffer by the same mistake. So vigor and joyousness are 
cramped. So is it cruelly false. The fact is that the hoe-han- 
dle dwarfs, distorts, stiffens and crooks, while the game of ball 
makes for an elastic, symmetrical, splendid development. 

No saw-horse drudgery will ever do you anything but harm . 
No garden patch that in your heart of hearts you secretly hate, 
will ever repay your devotion with one particle of added 
elasticity. Crying babies give this great nation more exercise 
than it gets from all other sources combined, outside of the reg- 
ular daily tasks ; but no one ever heard of fathers and mothers 
progressing toward physical perfection under the discipline of 
crying babies. The fact is, there are two kinds of physical 
exercise. Mark the distinction, for it is generally over- 
looked. There is the exercise which depresses, and the exer- 
cise which exhilarates ; the exercise which leaves us with the 
consciousness that a certain definite drain has been made upon 
our strength, and the exercise which reinforces us in every fibre, 
without the abstraction of a grain of vital force. Grasp clearly 
this distinction between the exercise of exaction and the exer- 
cise of replenishment. For it is a distinction involving a vital 
difference, one which is strangely overlooked. Failure to make 
this distinction has caused many good resolutions to be aban- 
doned in sheer discouragement . They are legion, who, having 
had the matter placed before them, resolve to do their duty in 
this thing, and honor their bodies and disenthrall their intel- 
lects, but unwittingly select some form of exercise which, for 
them, is the exercise accompanied by a drain and followed by 
depression. Disappointed in the results anticipated, they 
gradually drop back into the old physical ways, without a log- 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 22% 

ical review of the matter to discover, if possible, where the dis- 
crepancy lies. The whole thing is allowed to go by default. 
The recognition oi the differing quality of different forms of 
exercise would be a revelation to many who have been more or 
less consciously perplexed because of the discrepancy between 
their theories of the benefit which should result from physical 
exercise, and their failure to receive positive good when they 
try to put these theories into practice. 

We have looked upon exercise as a matter of muscle only ; 
or at least as affecting immediately only muscle. "Whereas the 
influence of physical exercise is just as immediate, and almost 
as great structurally, upon the gray matter of the brain, as 
upon the biceps. Du Bois-Reymond says: "It is easy to 
show the error of the common view, and demonstrate that such 
bodily exercises as gymnastics, fencing, swimming, riding, 
dancing, and skating are much more exercises of the central 
nervous system, of the brain and spinal marrow. Every action 
of our body as a motive apparatus depends not less but more 
upon the proper co-operation of the" muscles than upon the force 
of their contraction. In order to execute a composite motion, 
like a leap, the muscles must begin to work in the proper order, 
and the energy of each one of them must increase, halt, and 
diminish, according to a certain law, so that the result shall be 
the proper position of the limbs, and the proper velocity of the 
center of gravity in the proper direction." As the nerve cen- 
ters are greater than the muscles, by just so much does the 
import and benefit of physical exercise pertain more to nerve-tis- 
sue than to muscle -tissue. Physical exercise or non-exercise 
means brain-gain or brain-loss just as truly as it means muscle- 
gain or muscle-loss. If we eat without relish we get harm 
rather than good ; if mind and muscle do not enter upon their 
exercise with honest appetite, no feeding of the frame should 
be expected. Only with this proviso is the saying of Maclaren 
true: "Let no man be afraid to exert himself lest ' it take it 



222 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

out of him. ' There is nothing in him that will not be replaced 
with interest by the very process of extraction." 

While I write these lines, a man of large business interests 
tells me that he is feeling better than for years past. He has 
been abusing himself by overwork and worry, and under exer- 
cise ever since he entered college some twelve years ago. He 
has lately bought a fast horse and a cart, and drives to and 
from his mills, some three miles or more distant, at a furious 
pace. To use his own words, he "walks into the factory 
feeling as if he could knock down every man in it ! " He has 
found an exercise which for him is exhilarating ; and the nerve- 
tissue changes it produces are plainly in advance of the muscu- 
lar. 

Understanding the necessity of selecting that exercise which 
shall be for us the most appropriate and stimulating, what are 
some of the best modes of exercise from which to make a selec- 
tion ? 

We may have, if we will, a home gymnasium. I quote from 
William Blaikie, in his excellent work, "How to Get Strong ": 

"All that people need for their daily in-door exercise is a few 
pieces of apparatus which are fortunately so simple and inex- 
pensive as to be within the reach of most persons. Buy two 
pitchfork handles at the agricultural store. Cut off enough of 
one of them to leave the main piece a quarter of an inch shorter 
than the distance between the jambs of your bedroom door, 
and square the ends. On each of these jams fasten two stout 
hard-wood cleats, so slotted that the square ends of the bar 
shall fit in snugly enough not to turn. Let the two lower cleats 
be directly opposite each other, and about as high as your 
shoulder ; the other two also opposite each other, and as high 
above the head as you can comfortably reach. 

"Again, bore into the jamb, at about the height of your 
waist, a hole as large as the bar is thick. Now work the auger 
farther into each hole, till it reaches the first piece of studding, 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 



223 



and then an inch or so into that. Find how many inches it is 
from the jamb to the end of the bore in the studding, and cut 
the second fork handle in halves. JPass one-half through the 




hole in the jamb, and set its end into the hole in the studding. 
Bore a similar hole in the other jamb directly opposite, and 
repeat the last-named process with its nearest studding-piece, 
and adjust remainder of the fork handle to it. Now cut enough off 
each piece of the handle to leave the distance between the two 
about eighteen inches. You have then provided yourself with 



224 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

a pair of bars on which you can try one ot the exercises usually 
practiced on the parallel bars, and that one worth almost as 
much as all the rest. 

" On the following page is a sketch of a pair of pulley-weights 
recently made, designed by Dr. Sargent, which are excellent. 
Their merits will be seen at a glance. Instead of the weights 
swaying sideways and banging against the boxes, as they are 
liable to do in the ordinary old-fashioned pulley-weight boxes, 
they travel in boxes, A A, between the rods B B. A rubber 
bed also prevents the weight from making a noise as it strikes 
the floor, while another capital feature is the arrangement of 
boxes, in which you may graduate the weight desired by add- 
ing little plates of a pound each, instead of the unchanging 
weight of the old plan. 

' ' One of these boxes, with its load, can easily be used as a 
rowing weight, by rigging a pulley -wheel a few inches above 
the floor, and directly in front of the weight box, and then 
making the rope long enough to also pass under this pulley. A 
Stick of the thickness of an oar handle can then be attached to 
the end of the rope. If the old-fashioned pulley-weights are 
preferred, as they are cheaper, long boxes take the place of 
these iron rods, and a common iron weight travels up and down 
in the boxes. At some of the gymnasiums — that ot the Young 
Men's Christian Association in New York, for example — these 
weights, of various sizes, snaffles, ropes, and handles, can all be 
had, of approved pattern and at reasonable rates. 

"Here, then, we have a horizontal bar fitted for most of the 
uses of that valuable appliance, a pair of parallel bars, or their 
equivalent for certain purposes, a pair of pulley- weights, and a 
rowing-weight. Now, with the addition of a pair of dumb- 
bells, weighing at first about one twenty-fifth of the user's own 
weight, we have a gymnasium more comprehensive than most 
persons would imagine. Mr. Bryant was contented for forty 
years with less apparatus even than this, and yet look at the 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 



225 



benefit he derived from it! The bar, cleats, and parallels 
ought to be made and put up for not over two dollars, and four 




or five dollars more will cover the cost of pulley-weights and 
gear on the old plan, unless a heavy rowing-weight is added, 
which can be had at five cents a pound, which is also the price 
of well-shaped dumb-bells. 

"Here is a gymnasium, then, under cover, rent free, exactly 
at hand, when one is lightly clad on rising or just before retir- 
ing, which takes up but little room, can hardly get out of order, 
which will last a dozen years. With these few bits of appara- 

U5) 



^26 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

tus every muscle of the trunk, nearly all those of the legs, and 
all those of the arms, can, by a few exercises so simple that 
they can be learned at a single trying, be brought into active 
play. The bar in the upper place will be useful mainly for 
grasping, hanging, or swinging on by the hands, or for pulling 
one's self up until the chin touches it. In the lower place it 
enables one to perform very many of the exercises usual on the 
horizontal bar. The short bars or handles have scarcely more 
than one office, but that is one of the most important of all 
exercises for the weak-armed and weak -chested. This exercise 
is the one called 'dipping.' The bars are grasped with the 
hands, the feet being held up off the floor ; then starting with 
the elbows straight, gradually lowering until the elbows are 
bent as far as possible, then rising till they are straight again, 
and so continuing, 

" The pulley- weights admit of a great variety of uses, reach- 
ing directly every muscle of the hand, wrist, arm, shoulder, 
dhest, abdomen, the entire back and neck ; while, by placing 
one foot in the handle and pulling the weight with it, several 
of the leg muscles soon have plenty to do, as is also the case 
with the rowing-weight. The field of the dumb-bells is hardly 
less extensive. 

"If but one of these pieces of apparatus can be had, the 
pulley-weights are the most comprehensive, and so the most 
important, though it is astonishing how closely the dumb-bells 
follow ; and then they have the great advantage of being port- 
able. Combine with the exercises you can get from all this 
apparatus those which need none at all, such as rising on the 
toes, hopping, stooping low, walking, running, leaping, and no 
more tools are needed to develop whatever muscles one likes. 
What special work will employ any particular muscle will be 
indicated later. 

u If the apparatus is only to be used by a man or boy, a 
striking-bag can be made of seven or eight pieces of soft calf- 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 227 

skin, so that the whole, when fall of sawdust, shall be either 
round like a ball or pear-shaped, and shall be about fifteen 
inches in horizontal diameter. This should be hung on a rope 
from a hook screwed into one of the beams of the ceiling. This 
makes a valuable acquisition to the snug little home-gymna- 
sium. 

4 'The fact of having a few bits of apparatus close at hand, 
when one is lightly clad, will tend to tempt any one to get at 
them a little while morning and evening. As has been shown, 
the cost of all these appliances will not be nearly as much as a 
moderate doctor's bill, and quite as little as the patent gymnas- 
tic articles, which are so often praised, mostly by people who 
know little or nothing of other forms of exercise than those 
fitted to their own apparatus. A large beam, for instance, has 
been devised, with handles fastened by a contrivance about it, 
which is meant to restore the spine (when out of place) to its 
proper position. But there is scarcely anything it can accom- 
plish which cannot readily be done on some one of these simple, 
old-fashioned, and far less cumbrous pieces of apparatus. 

"Again, in the large cities there are establishments where 
the chief and almost the sole exercise is with the lifting-machine. 
A person, standing nearly erect, is made to lift heavy weights 
often of several hundred, and even a thousand or more pounds. 
The writer, when a lad of seventeen, worked a few minutes 
nearly every day for six months on a machine of this kind ; and 
while it seemed a fine thing to lift six hundred pounds at first, 
.and over a thousand toward the end, there came an unques- 
tioned stiffening of the back, as though the vertebrae were 
packed so closely together as to prevent their free action. 
There came also a very noticeable and abnormal development 
of three sets of muscles ; those of the inner side of the fore- 
arm, the lower and inner end of the front thigh just above the 
knee, and those highest up on the back, branching outward 
from the base of the neck. With considerable other vigorous 



228 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

exercise taken at the same time, this heavy lifting still pro- 
duced the most marked effect, so that the development caused 
by it was soon large, out of all proportion compared with that 
resulting from the other work. 

" Now if it is the fact that they who practice on the ' health 
lift ' ordinarily take little or no other vigorous exercise, why is 
not this same partial development going to result ? And if this 
is the case, is it not rather a questionable exercise, especially 
for those to whom it is so highly recommended — the sedentary 
— and even worse for those who stand at desks all day ? We 
have seen it make one very stiff and ungainly in his move- 
ments, and it is natural that it should ; for he who does work 
of the grade suited to a truck-horse is far more likely to acquire 
the heavy and ponderous ways of that worthy animal than he- 
who spreads his exercise over all, or nearly all his muscles, 
instead of confining it to a few, and who makes many vigorous 
and less hazardous efforts, instead of a single mighty one. AIL 
the muscles of the arm, for instance, which are used in striking, 
out, putting up a dumb-bell, or any sort of pushing, are wholly 
idle in this severe pulling — more so, even, than they are in the 
oarsman when rowing. Hence, unless they get even work, 
there will be loss of symmetry, one-sided development, and only 
partial strength. * * * * * 

4 ' All have been known (the apparatus first mentioned) for a 
generation or more. But the many uses of them are but little 
known, and their introduction into our homes and schools has 
hardly yet begun. Yet, so wide is the range of exercise one 
can have with them, and of exercise of the very sort so many 
people need ; and so simple is the method of working them, so 
free, too, from danger or anything which induces one to over- 
work, and so inexpensive are they and easy to make, that they 
ought to be as common in our homes as are warm carpets and 
bright firesides. Every member of the family, both old and 
young, should use them daily, enough to keep the home-gym- 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 229 

nasium and its users in good working order. ***** 
"daily exercise for young men. 

" On rising, let him stand erect, brace his chest firmly out, 
and, breathing deeply, curl * dumb-bells (each of about one- 
fifteenth of his own weight) fifty times without stopping. This 
is biceps work enough for the early morning. Then, placing 
the bells on the floor at his feet, and bending his knees a little, 
and his arms none at all, rise to an upright position with them 
fifty times. The loins and back have had their turn now. 
After another minute's rest, standing erect, let him lift the bells 
fifty times as far up and out behind him as he can, keeping 
elbows straight, and taking care, when the bells reach the 
highest point behind, to hold them still there a moment. Now 
the under side of his arms, and about the whole of the upper 
back, have had their work. Next, starting with the bells at 
the shoulders, push them up high over the head, and lower 
fifty times continuously. Now the outer part of the upper 
arms, the corners of the shoulders, and the waist have all had 
active duty. 

" Finally, after another minute's rest, start with the bells 
high over the head, and lower slowly until the arms are in 
about the position they would be on a cross, the elbows being 
always kept unbent. Raise the bells to height again, then 
lower, and so continue until you have done ten, care being 
taken to hold the head six or more inches back of the perpendicu- 
lar, and to steadily face the ceiling directly overhead, while the 
chest is swelled out to its uttermost. Rest half a minute after 
doing ten, then do ten more, and so on till you have accom- 
plished fifty. This last exercise is one of the best-known chest- 
expanders. Now that these five sorts of work are over, few 
muscles above the waist have not had vigorous and ample work, 

* Starting witli the dumb-bells down at the sides, raise them slowly and 
steadily in front until they nearly touch the shoulder — technically, 
"curl" them— holding the head up, the neck rigidly erect, and the chest 
expanded to its very utmost. Now lower the bells slowly to the sides again, 
and repeat, and so continue. 



230 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

the lungs themselves have had a splendid stretch, and you have 
not spent over fifteen minutes on the whole operation. If you 
want to add a little hand and fore -arm work, catch a broom- 
slick or stout cane at or near the middle, and, holding it at 
arm's-length, twist it rapidly from side to side a hundred times 
with one hand, and then with the other. 

"In the late afternoon a five-mile walk on the road, at a four- 
mile pace, with the step inclined to be short, the knees bent but 
little, and the foot pushing harder than usual as it leaves the 
ground — this will be found to bring the legs and loins no incon- 
siderable exercise ; all, in fact, that they will probably need. If, 
shortly before bedtime each evening, the youth, after he has been 
working as above, say for a month, will, in light clothes and any 
old and easy shoes, run a mile in about seven minutes and a half, 
and, a little later, under the seven minutes, or, three nights a 
week, make the distance two miles each night, there will soon 
be a life and vigor in his legs which used to be unknown ; and 
if six months of this work brings a whole inch more on thigh 
and calf, it is only what might have been expected. 

"For still more rapid and decided advance, an hour at the 
gymnasium during the latter part of the morning, half of it at 
the rowing-weights, so thickening and stoutening the back, and 
the other half at ' dipping ' and other half-arm work on the 
parallel bars — so spreading and enlarging the chest and stout- 
ening the back-arms — these will increase the development rap- 
idly, and will sharpen the appetite at a corresponding rate. 
But it must be real work, and no dawdling or time lost. 

"Few youug men in any active employment, however, can 
spare this morning hour. Still, without it, if they will follow 
up the before-breakfast work, the walking in the fashion named, 
and the running, they will soon find time enough for this much, 
and most satisfactory results in the way of improved health and 
increased strength as well. Indeed, it will for most young men 
prove about the right amount to keep them toned up and ready 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 231 

for their day's work. If they desire great development in any 
special line, let them select some of the exercises described in 
the previous chapter, as aimed to effect such development, and 
practice them as assiduously, if need be, as Howell did his 
tread-mill work for his legs. 

' ' DAILY EXERCISE FOE BUSINESS MEN. 

" And what daily work shall the business man take? His 
aim is not to lay on muscle, not to become equal to this or that 
athletic feat, but simply to so exercise as to keep his entire 
physical and mental machinery in good working order, and 
himself equal to all demands likely to be made on him. 

" First he, like the young man or the woman, should make 
sure of the ten or fifteen minutes' work before breakfast. Not 
through the long day again will he be likely to have another 
good opportunity for physical exercise, at least until evening, 
and then he will plead that he is too tired. But in the early 
morning, fresh and rested, and with a few minutes at his dis- 
posal, he can, as Bryant did, without serious or violent effort 
work himself great benefit, the good effect of which will stay 
by him all the day. If he has in his room the few bits of appa- 
ratus suggested in the chapter on 'Home Gymnasiums,' he 
will be better off than Bryant was, in that he can have a far 
wider range of exercise, and that all ready at hand. 

" Let him first devote two or three minutes to the striking bag. 
Facing it squarely, with head back and chest well out, let him 
strike it a s accession of vigorous blows, with left and right fists 
alternating, until he has done a hundred in all. If he has hit 
hard and with spirit, he is puffing freely now, his lungs are 
fully expanded, his legs have had a deal of springing about to 
do, and his arms and chest have been busiest of all. This bag- 
work is really superb exercise, and if once or twice, later in the 
day, say at one's place of business, or at home again in the 
evening, he would take some more of it, he would find fret, 
discomfort, and indigestion flying to the winds, and in their 



232 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

place buoyancy and exhilaration of spirits to which too many 
men have long been strangers. * * * 

"Now use the dumb-bells two or three minutes. Let them 
weigh not over one-twenty-fifth of your own weight. First, 
with head and neck a trifle back of vertical, and the chest held 
out as full as possible, curl the bells, or lift them from down at 
arm's-length until you have drawn them close up to the shoul- 
ders, the finger-nails being turned upward. Lower again and 
repeat until you have done twenty-five, the chest being always 
out. The biceps muscles, or those of the front upper arm, and 
of the front of the shoulders and chest, have been busy now. 

" Next, starting with the bells at your shoulders, push both 
at once steadily up over your head as high as you can reach, and 
continue till twenty-five are accomplished. The back-arms, cor- 
ners of the shoulders, and the waist have now had their turn. 

"Facing the pulley- weights, and standing about two feet 
from them, catch a handle in each hand. Keeping the elbows 
stiff, draw first one hand and then the other in a horizontal 
line until your hand is about eighteen inches behind you, the 
body and legs being at all times held rigidly erect, and the chest 
well out. Continue this until you have done fifty strokes with each 
hand. This is excellent for the back of the shoulders — indeed 
for nearly the entire back above the waist. 

" Again, with back to the pulley-weights, hold the handles 
high over the head, and leaning forward about a foot, keeping 
the elbows unbent, bear the handles directly downward in front 
of you, and so do twenty-five. 

"Besides these few things, or most of them, put the bar in 
the upper place, and, catching it with both hands, just swing 
back and forth, at first for half a minute, afterward longer, 
always holding the head well back. This is capital at stretch- 
ing the ribs apart and expanding the chest. If the above exer- 
cises seem too hard at first, begin with half as much, or even 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 233 

less, and work gradually up until the number named can be 
easily done. 

"If, once in mid-morning, and again in mid-afternoon, the 
man, right in his store or office, will turn for two or three min- 
utes to his dumb-bells, and repeat what he did with his home 
pair in the morning, he will find the rest and change most 
refreshing. But in any case, whether be does so or not, every 
man in this country whose life is in-door ought to so divide his 
time that, come what may, he will make sure of his hour out- 
of-doors in the late afternoon, when the day's work is nearly or 
quite done. If he must get up earlier, or get to his work 
earlier, or work faster while he does work, no matter. The 
prize is well worth any such sacrifice, and even five times it. 
Emerson well says, 'The first wealth is health,' and no pains 
should be spared to secure it. Lose it awhile and see. 
Exercise vigorously that hour afoot, or horseback, or on the 
water, making sure that during it you utterly ignore your busi- 
ness and usual thoughts. Walk less at first, but soon do your 
four miles in the hour, and then stick to that, of course having 
shoes in which it is easy to walk, and before long the good 
appetite of boyhood will return, food taste as it often has not 
done for years, sound sleep will be surer, and new life and zest 
will be infused into all that you do. Let every man in this 
country who lives by brain- work get this daily ' constitutional ' 
at all hazards, and it will do more to secure to him future years 
of health and usefulness than almost anything else he can do. 

"It will be observed that there is nothing severe or violent 
in any of these exercises suggested for men — nothing that old 
or young may not take with like advantage. The whole idea is 
to point out a plain and simple plan of exercise, which, followed 
up faithfully, will make sound health almost certain, and which 
is easily within the reach of all." 

A word about walking. Many men of business say and 
think that they get sufficient exercise in the walking incident 



234 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

to their working hours, and in getting to and from their places of 
business. Very few really walk at all. The way they shuffle along 
the streets, with head down, shoulders dangling, chest collapsed, 
with long, wooden step — all tumbled in a heap — is not worthy 
the honorable name of walking, and does not do thwm a particle 
of good. Said a broken-down business man, whose sleepless 
nights were spent in studying the figures on the ceiling, to his 
doctor, who was urging upon him intelligent physical cul- 
ture, "Why, I get exercise enough. I always walk to and 
from the office, and go home to dinner. I get all the exercise I 
can stand." The fact was, the manner in which he got over 
that four miles a day made it a performance from which he 
reaped no resultant benefit. While twenty minutes in the 
evening in a vacant lot opposite his house, with a ball and bat 
and an active companion, was sufficient to put him to sleep at 
nine o'clock, to slumber dreamlessly and uninterruptedly until 
half past six the next morning. 

Walking worthy the name is a fine exercise. But to be 
worthy it must be with erect trunk, chin up, shoulders squared, 
drinking the free air into the expanded chest as one would drink 
cool water in summer, and step short and sharp, the foot leav- 
ing the ground with an emphatic push. Such walking is a fine 
physical exercise, and carries with it the advantages incident to 
all outdoor exercises — i. 0., open air, and sunlight. Reference 
has already been made to the value of the first. Professor H. 
C. Wood remarks on this point: 

"The popular appreciation of the value of fresh air is very 
far from being as thorough as it might be. During the rebel- 
lion, it was no uncommon sight to see sick men, who had been 
languishing in the ward of a hospital, suddenly improve when 
placed in exposed tents. The windows of the wards had been 
habitually kept open, but this was by no means as efficient as 
the perpetual air-bath of a porous tent. The more pure air the 
better, and by night as well as by day. There is this much of 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 235 

truth in the popular prejudice against night air — in malarious dis- 
tricts the air after dusk does contain more of the peculiar poison 
than does the atmosphere in the sunlight. But in high, health- 
ful districts, night air is very good air."* 

As to the second, the worth of simple sunlight is apt to be 
forgotten except as some white, cellar-grown sprout reminds us 
of it. ' ' Sunlight is too cheap to become a fashionable remedy, but 
its hygienic influence can hardly be overrated. Even in the 
glorious climate of the Latian hills, the Roman Epicureans con- 
structed special solaria — glass-covered turrets — where they 
could bask in the full rays of the winter sun, the balm of old 
age, as Columella calls it; and, on the summerless Isle of 
Kugen, Nature has taught the poor fishermen to carry their bairns 
to the downs of Stubbenkammer, whenever the Baltic fogs alter- 
nate with a few sunny days."f 

No home gymnasium is complete without Indian Clubs. The 
Club Exercise is one of the very best means of indoor culture of 
the body. The average man is better developed below the 
waist than above, and therefore the Club is specially fitted to 
bring him into proper proportions. "Although but two- thirds 
of the body, viz., from the loins upward, are called into opera- 
tion in this exercise, its importance must be estimated by the 
fact that they are precisely those requiring constant artificial 
practice, being naturally most exempt from exertion. As an 
adjunct to Training, there is nothing in the whole round of 
gymnastic performances that will be found of more essential 
service than this exercise with the Indian Clubs. It demands 
but little muscular exertion, and such as it does require calls 
chiefly upon that portion of the system which it finds in a state 
of comparative repose.'*^; 

They do not lack the endorsement of professional pugilists. 
John C. Heenan writes of them : " Although scarcely a week 

*Bra in-work and Overwork. 

+Dr. Oswald in Physical Education. 

;Walker's Manly Exercises. 



236 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

has elapsed since I have commenced using them, their beneficial 
results are the subject of much commendation from my trainer, 
Jack McDonald, and my friends and backers. As an assistant 
for training purposes, and imparting strength to the muscles of 
the arms, wrists, and hands, together, in fact, with the whole 
muscular system, I do not know of their equal, and I find by 
experience that the popularity in which your Clubs are held by 
Professors of Gymnastics in various parts of my native country, 
is fully deserved, and at no distant day they will become one of 
the institutions of America." 

The Indian Club Exercise comes to us from the East ; it does 
not owe its name to any remote connection with the aborigines 
of this country. "As the name implies, the Indian Club is an 
institution of India. In sketches of Indian life, by missionaries 
and travelers, we have accounts of the various national sports 
and pastimes of the natives, in which mention is made of the 
swinging of heavy war clubs, of wood, in various graceful and 
fantastic motions ; that the performers of this exercise exhibited 
great muscular development and Herculean strength. 

"Officers connected with the British Army in India also give 
accounts of these Indian recreations. The exercises are thus 
described by one of them: 'The wonderful Club exercise is 
one of the most effectual kinds of athletic training, known any- 
where in common use throughout India. The Clubs are of 
wood, varying in weight according to the strength of the per- 
son using them, and in length about two feet and a half, and 
some six or seven inches in diameter at the base, which is level, 
so as to admit of their standing firmly when placed on the 
ground, and thus affording great convenience for using them in 
the swinging positions. ' 

' ' The exercise is in great repute among the native soldiery, 
police, and others whose caste renders them liable to emergen- 
cies where great strength of muscle is desirable. The evolu- 
tions which the Clubs are made to perform, in the hands of one 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 237' 

accustomed to their use, are exceedingly graceful, and they 

vary almost without limit. Beside the great recommendation 

of simplicity, the Indian Club practice possesses the essential 

property of expanding the chest and exercising every muscle in 

the body concurrently.* 

* * "It has before been stated, that as a 

means of physical culture, the Indian Club stands pre-eminent 
among the varied apparatus of gymnastics now in use. This- 
fact is unquestionable, as those who know how to use them are 
ready to attest. For simplicity and convenience, they are 
unsurpassed by any other kind of apparatus, and half the fix- 
tures of an ordinary Gymnasium will not produce such a general 
development of the muscles from the loins upwards, as a pair 
of Clubs. 

'* To those, then, who say they have no time for exercise, we 
heartily recommend the Indian Clubs, which, in connection 
with a daily walk of a few miles, will be just exactly what i& 
required to secure physical perfection and muscular strength, 
without putting yourself to but very little trouble to attain it. 
A half hour with the clubs, daily, morning and evening, or to 
suit convenience it need not be so divided, but may all be taken 
in the morning, or all in the evening, will, in connection with 
walking, keep the muscular system in perfect condition, and 
thus insure perfect bodily health. To those who aspire to 
more than ordinary development and strength, take more than 
ordinary exercise with the Clubs, and you can attain what you 
desire, to almost any limit. 

* * * * "The proper weight for beginners 
depends, of course, upon condition and strength, but can be 
approximately arrived at as follows : As a general rule, the 
proper weight may be determined by holding a pair horizon- 
tally at the side, at arm's length, letting them down to a per, 

*Shortly after the establishment of British colonies in India, the Club 
Exercise was introduced into the British Army as a part of the drill. For the 
full manual, with diagrams, see Appendix A. 



238 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

pendicular, and raising them again, several times, grasping them 
at the extremity of the handles. If this cannot be done after 
several trials, the Club is too heavy, and a lighter pair must be 
tried, until you obtain a fit. 

" The majority of beginners, and even somewhat advanced 
Gymnasts — if they have never used the Club — will find that 
from six to ten pounds is sufficient weight to start with. It is 
almost a universal mistake in trying to use clubs that are too 
heavy. It must be understood that it is not sufficient to be able 
to execute a few simple evolutions with a Club, and then con- 
sider yourself a graduate; for the real benefit can only be 
derived from a protracted exercise of difficult movements and 
artistic combinations, calculated to bring into play every known 
muscle — and to discover many unknown ones — from the loins 
upwards. 

"It is therefore recommended that the novice commence 
with a weight that he can easily manage, and with which he 
can execute the preliminary exercises. As he progresses, the 
weight may be increased, in proportion as the strength 
develops*." 

It is necesary that one who is a stranger to the Clubs pro- 
vide himself with either a teacher, or a good manual on the 
subject, f that he may get at the exercise intelligently. With- 
out such aid they would be to him meaningless chunks of wood, 
from which he would get little benefit. No useful purpose is 
accomplished by swinging them aimlessly and listlessly, as 
chance may dictate ; and when so treated they very soon fall 
into disuse and merited neglect. They must be made the 
implements of clearly defined, systematic movements, or they 
become of no more significance than any other sticks of wood. 

Bean bags are by no means to be despised as implements of 
indoor exercise. They have the advantage, too, of being 

*Kehoe on Indian Club Exercise. 
fSee Appendix A. 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 239 

social in their nature, as any number may join in the exercises, 
which are equally appropriate for the entire household. Any 
exercise that can include the whole family circle has the 
immense advantage of that spirit and hilarity which always 
accompany any home-doing which can be made genuinely 
mutual. The bean bags have the rare quality of equal fitness 
and equal promise of benefit for the old and the young, the 
masculine body and the feminine body. 

"These bags are made of stout bed-ticking, about ten inches 
square, and two-thirds filled with beans. They should always 
be kept away from the dust as much as possible. 

"If these exercises are to be performed by couples, partners 
should stand facing each other, about six feet apart. Throw 
the bag to partner from chest with both hands, from chest with 
right hand, then with left. From behind the head with both 
hands, then with right and left. Bag behind the back, throw 
with both hands, with right, with left. Stand back to back, 
throw bag over head with both hands, with right, with left. 
Take two bags, throw them with right and catch them with 
left. Throw them with left and catch them with right. Throw 
them with both and catch them with both hands. 

" Same exercises can be taken with three or more bags as the 
skill increases. 

' ' Yary the exercises by taking them in quartettes, standing 
a greater distance apart. Stand again in two rows down the 
hall, six feet apart and facing each other. Starting at the head 
with a bag in each leader's hand, let it be thrown to every other 
one till all have caught it, when it must be returned in same 
manner. 

c 5 The leader getting bag first on return trip should hold up 
bag as signal of victory. Stand in same rows, but face up the 
hall, then pass bag over head to next one in line, and so on to 
the last, and back the same way. Any number of bags can be 
used in this manner."* 

*Hand-book of Light Gymnastics, by Lucy B. Hunt, Instructor in Gym- 
nastics, Smith College. 



240 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

The above specifications as to weight of bags and exercises 
for their use are intended for a girls' school, and present a very 
fair average of work for family use where all its members of 
both sexes and various ages are to take part in the sport . In 
the office of the writer, a bag twelve inches square in the clear, 
containing eight pounds of beans, is in daily use — the exercise 
being merely its rapid and vigorous pitching and throwing 
between two persons. To catch it when thrown swiftly, and 
often wide of the mark, now on this side and now on that, and 
return it with equal spirit, is magnificent exercise ; and is ot 
that come-at-able kind which can be taken up for a few moments 
at just those times during the day when the need for its stimu- 
lation may be felt. In these exercises, too, the risk of accident 
is reduced to a minimum, for the bag, being but two-thirds filled, 
is so yielding that it is almost impossible for one to be hurt by 
it, let it come never so swiftly, or hit where it may. 

Among out-door exercises bicycling occupies a position in the 
front rank. In speaking of the bicycle it must be understood 
that no reference is made to the common u bone-shakers" which 
the boys are riding about our streets. The elegant rubber-tired 
steel machine is always had in mind, which skims along the 
roadway as rapidly and noiselessly as the swallow in the upper 
air, its rider " leaving but a shadow as he flies. " It is a marvel 
of mechanical ingenuity and cunning, from the hollow steel 
backbone to the ball bearings. Easily mastered by the most 
inapt and awkward, its charm is still so great that one does not 
need to put forth his will power — does not need to compel him- 
self— to insure faithfulness to his exercise. For to mount and 
spin away is a strong temptation, rather than a needful yet irk- 
some duty to be insisted upon. Thus, aside from the bringing 
into play of all the muscles and the consequent symmetrical 
development, it fulfills the requirement of that hearty enjoy- 
ment and pleasing excitement without which no exercise is 
adequate* As an artist would say, the "motive" is good. 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 241 

Some of the most sagacious business men of my acquaintance 
would no more think of doing without their " Harvards " or 
"Columbias" than they would think of doing without sleep. 
A successful newspaper mau has three, and feels that his health 
is on an assured basis, instead of its being the creature of capri- 
cious chance. That it is a matter of equal certainty with his 
bank account. Though extraordinary circumstances may upset 
either, under ordinary conditions both are assured. A whole- 
sale merchant tells the writer that he and his brother were 
among the very first to import bicycles into this country ; that - 
they were the first to ride one hundred miles in twelve hours ; 
that on the fine roads about eastern cities it is easy to keep 
ahead of what is ordinarily called a three-minute horse ; and 
that thirty miles before supper is to be looked upon as not in 
anyway an extraordinary performance. As he puts it, " The 
proper use of the bicycle is one of the very finest forms of 
exercise. There is only one thing that beats it — salt-water 
yachting! " 

Dr. Geo. S. Hull, in urging upon physicians the adoption of 
the bicycle in the placeof the time-honored buggy and cart, 
speaks as follows : 

"The bicycle will make, on most of country roads 3 from 
eight to ten miles an hour readily. (One hundred miles a day 
is getting to be a common run.) It takes but one-third of one's 
weight to propel it on a level ; up steep hills one's weight can 
be doubled, if necessary, by pulling upon the bars, thus giving 
the muscles of the trunk and upper extremities some vigorous 
exercise ; down grade it goes by itself and at any speed desir- 
able. # * _ . « 

" Concerning the therapeutics of the bicycle, it is not making 
too broad a statement to say that it can be recommended in 
nearly all cases where horseback-riding is indicated, the excep- 
tions being ladies and very old or crippled men; and for most 
of these the tricycle is still preferable to the horse, and certainly 



242 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

infinitely safer. In horseback-riding the inexperienced rider 
gets the most exercise (jolting, which is not always beneficial), 
while the skillful horseman merely gets the pure air, and very 
little above the usual amount of that, as his circulation and res- 
piration are not much increased by the easy, quiet motion his 
skill as a horseman gives him. In fact, after learning to ride 
horseback, it often becomes tiresome, the exhilarating effect 
passes off, and the good results consequently diminish. In 
bicycling, however, the whole body is in motion, and every 
rider gets a like amount of exercise. The circulation is quick- 
ened to any extent ; the blood-vessels of the limbs are not com- 
pressed to the extent they are in horseback-riding; there is but 
little or no jarring; the muscles of the trunk and upper extrem- 
ities (which, as a rule, are so imperfectly developed in physi- 
cians) are brought more into play, and the mind kept actively 
engaged in the sport — for sport it becomes, even when flying 
along to a * terrible accident' or to a death-bed scene. 

u Does the novelty wear off? Ask the first bicyclist you meet, 
and be prepared for his emphatic ; No ! ' 

<c Every new remedy is sparingly handled by the profession 
until ample proofs of its virtue are produced, and the bicycle 
has been no exception. Fortunately, however, for this new 
preparation of iron under consideration, it has been thoroughly 
tested, and hosts of testimonials can be produced in its favor, — 
not manufactured proofs, such as prop up so many of the pat- 
ent medicines of our country, but volunteered and accompanied 
with such indisputable evidence that disease has been conquered, 
as increased chest measurements, accumulated avoirdupois, mul- 
tiplied strength, improved digestion, refreshing sleep, etc., etc. 

"Now, the bicycle being an easy, safe, and rapid roadster, 
suitable especially for the physician in his active, out-door life 
and many emergencies, and also advisable for convalescents and 
persons debilitated by close confinement or excessive mental 
strain, producing insomnia, loss of appetite, etc., and, more- 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 243 

over, being a powerful means of building up good constitutions 
in our youth, why should not the medical profession seize upon 
this great invention and make it useful and profitable to them- 
selves (it costs but half the price of a good horse) ; and why 
not crowd it into their Materia Medica at the head of the c Fer- 
rum ' preparations, and then see how it will bear the test of 
application ? ' ' 

Dr. W. T. Parker, of the United States Army, has an equally 
favorable opinion of this form of exercise : 

"It is undoubtedly true that the merits of bicycle-riding are 
becoming more generally known, and the number of ' wheel- 
men ' increasing steadily each year. The very erroneous idea 
which prevailed against the bicycle on account of supposed 
injury to the health, by inducing rupture, rush of blood to the 
head, etc., has happily disappeared, and instead of being used 
only by the most robust and active, as heretofore, the bicycle is 
now a regular prescription, far more beneficent in its health and 
life giving properties than all the pills and potions ever invented. 
* * * "We have here a preparation of 'steel 
and rubber for ameliorating, enlivening and prolonging human 
life,' which is almost unequalled. We can prescribe the bicycle 
for all men and boys who have legs and arms, and who need the 
tonic of out-of-door exercise, and the mental stimulant of a new 
enjoyment. It is quite impossible for me to describe the exhil- 
aration of riding on one of these wonderful and beautiful 
machines. It is a new departure, indeed ; and as the wheelman 
leaves behind the horse-car and the cab, so pass out of sight 
morbid fancies, jaundiced ideas, irritable feelings, and the mind 
is awaked, refreshed, delighted, by the health-giving exercise. 
It is to be regretted that the prescription is for men only ; but 
possibly the day and the opportunity may come for our sisters 
and wives to enjoy the wheel . I have said that this new remedy 
must be taken out of doors . To confine the bicycle to a skat- 
ing-rink is like going on a fox-hunt in a gymnasium. The 



244 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

bicycle is like a restive horse that seeks a gallop on the broad 
plains. * * 

" For the professional man, hard-worked and needing exer- 
cise and fresh air, what can equal the bicycle for a remedy ? In 
our cities we find daily in the gymnasiums tired, worn-out men 
trying to improve their muscles, and exerting themselves in 
dimly-lighted dusty rooms, for whom an hour on the bicycle 
would be worth more than all their exertions at gymnastics ! 
Here is where the bicycle is most desirable for the very class ot 
patients who need out-of-door exercise. No longer is the bicycle- 
reserved for the strong and the athletic : it is now a new remedy 
to provide health and strength. Almost every muscle is brought 
into action, the pulse quickened, the brain stimulated, the eye 
on the qui vive, the ear ready for the lightest sound. The use 
of the bicycle is, in fact, the exercise ''par excellence, ' and he-, 
who has never enjoyed its pleasures has much awaiting him.. 
For constipation, sleeplessness, dyspepsia, and many other ills 
which flesh is heir to, not to speak of melancholy, — all are cura 
ble, or certainly to be improved, by the new remedy, i Bicycle. y 
This remedy must be taken in proper doses, not too little, — an 
underdose is more to be feared than an overdose in this treat- 
ment. Few have leisure enough to run any risk of taking an 
overdose. How many, though, only wish that they might have 
a chance to try an overdose! It is always an excellent prescrip- 
tion for the convalescent, and nearly always for chronic invalids. " 
In the minds of many, a serious objection to this method of 
physical culture is found in its unsocial nature. True, men and 
boys may and do ride socially together. But the sister and the 
wife are supposed to be excluded. Married men (who have 
never tried it, and who do not know that a thoroughly well 
man is worth more to his family in one hour than a half sick 
one in the whole twenty-four), have met me with this, as they 
considered, fatal objection, when urged to avail themselves of 
the benefits to be found in the health-giving " wheel." But 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 245 

the bicycle has a very near relative not open to this accusation. 
Add to it one wheel, and call it a tricycle, and presto, the fam- 
ily may ride! The bicycle came to us from England, and the 
tricycle, though we as yet may hardly say it has come, is cer- 
tainly coming. Dr. Parker has seen it in its home, and having 
seen its home- virtues, feels the " desire to say a word for the 
tricycle. To be sure it is not so enjoyable or satisfactory in 
general as the bicycle, but it has many good points, and is in 
comparison to its fleet and graceful rival as the carriage-horse to 
the racer. 

u The traveler in England is much struck with the number 
of tricycles one sees everywhere. The errand boy, house- 
builder, and, indeed, almost every trade and profession, use 
the tricycle in their daily avocations. It is easily managed and 
perfectly safe, and so is the bicycle for that matter ; but the tri- 
cycle seems safer. You will notice gentlemen leap off their tri- 
cycles and go into shops and offices in the most matter-of-fact 
way, leaving the machine in perfect safety in the street. Per- 
haps some, more cautious than the rest, will attach the chain 
and padlock to the wheel ; but usually they dismount, leaving 
their carriage without fear of losing it in their absence. 

"On the esplanade, which is a delightful feature of English 
watering-places, one meets many ladies and gentlemen riding 
about on tricycles and bicycles, some alone and some in ' socia- 
bles.' Here is a young lady working the pedals of a 'sociable,' 
while by her side sits her aged mother, reading, while they ride 
along together quietly, yet swiftly. A very pretty picture, 
indeed, and not at all uncommon. I well remember one even- 
ing last summer, while walking in the suburbs of Portsmouth, 
England, seeing a young gentleman on a ' sociable ' tricycle 
ride up quietly and quickly to a house gate, and spring off 
lightly from his tricycle. He went into the house and soon 
returned with a young lady, whom he assisted into the tricycle ; 
then he took the seat beside her, and together they moved off 



246 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

at a rapid pace, steering gracefully past carriages and pedes- 
trians until they reached the broad esplanade, where they fairly 
flew over the ground. It was a pretty sight, and one I shall 
long remember. Many times I have seen fathers with their 
infant children riding with them on the sociable, or with wife 
holding the baby while the father provided the motive power for 
the machine. It is very desirable to have both bicycle and tri- 
cycle, just as we have more than one carriage when we can 
afford it. The bicycle should be purchased first, however. 

"With the belief and the hope that we are only in the 
infancy of this delightful new departure in locomotion, I most 
cheerfully recommend the new remedy — the bicycle and its 
associate, the tricycle — and believe that few after a faithful 
trial will ever ' go away dissatisfied? " 

Turning from the testimony of physicians to that of another 
profession, we find Lawyer Pratt, of Boston, saying of the 
bicycle:— "Running as it does but little in absolutely direct 
lines, but of necessity always in graceful curves, keeping its 
rider in gentle but ever- varying motion, and free, erect poise, 
with unlimited capacity of possible feats and fancy ridings, it is 
always, wherever it makes its appearance, to the beholder a 
thing of wonderful attraction and aesthetic interest. To the 
rider it is a grateful and a beneficial exercise and a tireless charm. 

"It runs, it leaps, it rears and writhes, and shies and kicks ; 
it is in infinite restless motion, like a bundle of sensative nerves ; 
it is beneath its rider like a thing of life, without the uncertainty 
and resistance of an uncontrolled will. 

"As a means of exercise, it calls every muscle and nerve and 
faculty into alert and healthful activity, without fatigue, in the 
open air, the sunshine, and the natural beauties of a rapidly- 
changing landscape. 

' ' As compared with horseback-riding, it is safer, gentler, 
readier, and less monotonous ; while its less expense and care 
places it within the reach of many who could not afford the 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 24? 

other. Than gymnastic exercises it is more natural, evenly dis- 
tributed, and stimulating, and is out of doors. There is no 
danger except from carelessness ; and, however carelessly pur- 
sued, it is not as dangerous as any other means of locomotion, 
as base-ball playing, swimming, skating, shooting, or any of 
the manly sports pursued with equal want of care. There were 
some objections to the velocipede on account of liability to 
rupture and other injuries ; but to this no such objections lie. 
Physicians whose attention has been called to it unanimously 
pronounce in its favor, and it finds a large number of votaries 
among them. The testimony of many a professional man of 
sedentary habits and impaired health, to which I may add my 
own, is that of gratitude for its benefit and rejuvenation. 

"As a means of practical travel it is economical, rapid, and 
capable of long continuance without exhaustion. It is an 
always-bridled horse ; it costs nearly as much in the first place, 
perhaps, as either a horse or a carriage, but it saves one of 
them ; its feed is a pint of oil a year, and its grooming is a 
handful of cotton-waste and ten minutes' attention now and 
then. It never runs away, requires no harness, and breaks no 
carriages. It has but two disadvantages, or perhaps three : 
the first is, that it is a selfish affair, — you cannot take on a 
friend, though it promotes good-fellowship and generosity 
otherwise ; the second is that it is not adapted to inclement 
weather, deep mud, or snow ; and the third, that it does require 
at first a little special learning of the art. It takes a man along 
three times as fast as he can walk, and with much less expen- 
diture of power, as will be seen in proof in another chapter. 
One rides eight or nine miles an hour on it, over ordinary roads, 
for several hours in succession, and dismounts as fresh as when 
he began ; and there are no special discomforts, such as follow 
walking or horseback-riding for the same length of time. One 
hundred miles in a day is a fair day's ride on the road for an aver- 
age rider ; fifty miles a day is a pastime ; a lun of ten or twenty 



24:8 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

miles of an evening, or to a morning breakfast call on a friend, 
is a pleasant and wholesome diversion. It is driven with ease, 
after a little practice, up any hill where a horse in light buggy 
can trot, and over any road that is decent for travel. A sandy 
road, or deep mud, or very stony way, is difficult; so is a cob- 
ble-stone pavement ; but the bicycle in a practical road machine 
for all ordinary highways, up hill and down hill as they occur, 
and is far more enjoyable out of doors than on a floor. 

"As a sport, bicycling »is manly, innocent, humane, and 
rational. The companionable 'run,' the club 'meet,' the 
amateur 'race,' are all full of refreshing enjoyment and 
healthful excitement. The friendly emulation and the volun- 
tary struggle compel regular and temperate habits, and know 
no whip or spur; while the professional contests, like those of 
cricket and yachting, are as yet without any of those ungentle- 
manly associations, and even excesses and cruelties, which are 
so often objectionably attendant upon boxing, billiards, trotting, 
pedestrian races, and other public exhibitions of physical train- 
ing or endurance. 

" The training of eye and ear, the alertness and suppleness of 
limb and joint and muscle, the quick observation, the prompt 
decision in emergency, the strength and courage and self-reliance, 
necessarily developed in this sport, are such as to cause it to lead 
in these respects e^ery other one, and to combine the good results 
of many. It is pre-eminently a gentlemanly recreation, a 
refined sport. It is pursued by noblemen and right honorables 
abroad, and by nature's nobility in our own untitled land. 
Senior wranglers at the universities, and first-prize Hebrew 
scholars, are not slow to win championship cups and medals ; 
and, though the royal Guelphs may not be distinguished 
riders, yet the Prince and Princess of Wales graciously accepted 
the honor of being escorted into Coventry by bicyclers in 
November, 1874. Indeed, the ability to ride the bicycle easily 
and gracefully on occasion is already an accomplishment which 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 249 

no gentleman can afford to be without, even if he be not an 
habitual devotee." 

The bicycle is a comparatively new thing in this country, but 
is older in England, where it has stood well the test of time. 
c< Forty thousand bicycles are owned in London and its environs, 
and three times that number elsewhere in England, of which 
some 2, 200 were massed together in simultaneous motion at the 
last annual parade at Hampton Court. Upward of 5,000 are 
certainly known to be owned in the United States, while the 
true number is presumably nearer 10,000, judging from the fact 
that more than 800 were present at the Boston parade." 

Patient reader, do you begin to wonder if the bicycle be 
not monopolizing an undue share of these pages ? Mount and 
learn to ride it, and you will say that it has not had a tithe of 
the room it deserves. It cannot longer be questioned that in 
its proper use is found the finest form of exercise at present 
known to man. In seeking a reason for the gratifying results 
it accomplishes in the way of body-building, it must not be for- 
gotten that though the propulsive power is applied to the pedal, 
the saddle takes the weight of the trunk off from the feet and 
legs, while the whole science and art of riding lies in the han- 
dles. Thus the muscular activity and responsibility is finely 
and evenly distributed throughout the entire frame — arms, 
shoulders, trunk and legs all doing their fair share of the 
work. To all this must be added the plunge into the free air of 
heaven, and the exposure to the sunlight of all outdoors which 
is involved in the use of the bicycle ; — and it is hard to imagine 
,a more nearly perfect form of exercise . Still, there are two 
possibilities of unsatisfactory results which must be guarded 
against. The first is over-exercise. The wheel is so fascinat- 
ing that one must not trust to inclination for the signal that 
•enough has been attempted for one day, but rather put that 
duty upon his sound sense as opposed to inclination. Over- 
work in exercise is not to be tolerated anymore than over-work 



250 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

in anything else. The second is an inadequate chest. Even on 
this fairy steed it is easy to let the trunk double together and 
the shoulders lop forward. Sit erect, the shoulders squared and 
the chest well out ; then spin away as you please, you cannot 
miss the road to health. 

When questions of health are under discussion, no man com- 
mands closer attention than Dr. B. W. Richardson of London. 
In the current number of Longman's Magazine he writes as 
follows of the bicycle as a means of health. 

44 To the human family the art of cycling is the bestowal of a 
new faculty. I am not an accomplished cyclist, yet I find that 
by means of the simple machine, the tricycle, facility of pro- 
gression by my own muscular powers is fairly doubled, while 
half the weariness incident to progression on foot is saved. 
If I walk ten miles in three hours — a fair pace — I am tired : 
my ankles feel weak, my feet sore, my muscles weary ; so that 
after the effort I am unfitted for any mental work until recruited 
by a long rest. If I go the same distance on the tricycle on 
the same kind of road, I find that an hour and a half is the 
fullest time required for the distance, and when the distance is 
finished, instead of feeling a sense of fatigue, instead of being 
ankle-wearied and foot-sore, I am agreeably refreshed by the 
exercise, and ready for study or other mental occupation. 

"In the earlier periods of my professional career, riding on 
horseback was a necessary part of the daily life. I had 
learned before then to ride without a saddle and to become 
habituated to all paces, and until very lately 1 have kept up 
horse exercise from the love of it, so that still, with a little 
renewed trrining, I can take a ride on horseback of five-and- 
twenty miles without excessive fatigue. But I would much 
rather be forced to ride forty miles on a tricycle, if the riding 
were a matter of choice, and the question of fatigue the point 
that determined the choice. This personal knowledge is ten- 
dered because it is the most practical, in support of the state- 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 251 

ment that the art of cycling confers on those who learn it a new 
faculty of locomotion. It is intended to be a modest proof of 
the statement ; for, if I were to follow it up by the record of 
what accomplished cyclists have achieved, it might be proved 
that two or more faculties had been added, and that when a 
man can wheel himself at the rate of twenty-miles an hour, 
and a woman can wheel herself a hundred miles a day, there is 
found a new machinery in the human body itself — a new set of 
muscles almost, a new skeleton leverage, a new kind of volition. 
Nor will advance stop. We are entering on a new era in loco- 
motion. To those of us who have studied the question of 
muscular motion physiologically, it is quite clear that concen- 
tration of power in great engines is not the ultimate, as it is 
not the natural, design for progression, because it is not pri- 
mary. It seems a wonderful thing and an easy thing for hun- 
dreds of persons to be moved by one steam-engine. It seems 
like starting and moving from a beginning if we shut our eyes 
to everything until we see the engine and train before us. But 
let us go back. Let us think of the enormous amount of mus- 
cular power that has been employed to extract the materials 
out of which that engine is made and to construct the 
engine ; to dig out from the earth the coal that feeds the fur- 
nace ; and all by living power. Then the questions spring up 
how much human labor is actually saved, how much of the 
severest labor is added to mankind by the engine ? And soon 
another question springs up — namely, how long will men con- 
sent to be engines for engines ? It is hardly in human nature 
to suppose that men will long continue to hold such a position. 
Will they hold to it in these islands for another fifty years ? I 
very much misunderstand my coming countrymen if they will. 
Sir Humphrey Davy, in the later part of his life, said that 
long before coal was used up men would know how to burn 
water. That is probably true ; but what about coal-working ? 



$452 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. V 

Long before coal ceases the coal worker will cease, and per- 
chance before men can burn water. 

" We want, therefore, to return quickly to first principles. 
Everyone his own locomotor against time. 

"By the simple machines, bicycles and tricycles, we are 
returning to first principles. We are endowing every person 
who can use these machines with a new and independent gift 
of progression, and to what extent this art will proceed in a 
quarter of a century if it makes the same progress that it has 
made in the past twentieth part of a century, he were indeed a 
bold man who should venture to predict. I have already said, 
what I now take occasion to repeat, that the art of flight will be the 
practical out-come of the grand experiment which is now going 
on; for, when a machine can be reduced in weight to twenty-six 
pounds, and when such a machine can be propelled on a good 
track twenty miles within the hour, by human limbs, carrying 
the man who propels it, there are not many removes to the 
capacity of driving wings or air-screws at a sufficient rate to 
afford support to the machine on the air. I think that many 
persons will, indeed, live to see a partial development, at least, 
of this kind. They will, I mean, see constructed a machine 
which will be partly sustained by the air and partly by surface of 
water— of sea, or lake, or river — and which will skim over such 
surface with just sufficient friction for steerage power, and no 
more. In short, a flying canoe or boat which, elegant as use- 
ful, will at one moment like a nautilus run with the wind, and 
at another skim the water, independently of wind, like a 
sea-bird. 

" As we stand at present, we have, then, to recognize two 
facts : one an accomplished fact, namely, that men and women 
can do such remarkable feats in progression, that they are now 
the swiftest and most enduring of all land animals ; and the 
other a promising fact — namely, that men and women may soon 
rival animals of the sea and of the air in the same process. 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 253 

The facts suggest that the time has come when an inquiry is 
demanded on the questions whether we are now employing 
what has been done to the best of purposes, and whether the 
future outlook is in every sense satisfactory. It appears to me, 
as one of those who take part in the development of a great 
movement, that the best is not being done, and that a new 
departure is immediately demanded in order to keep the pro- 
gress of the art of cycling in a proper position in respect to its 
advancement and its usefulness. 

"If you ask a cyclist why he takes part in the movement, 
and what his interest in it means, his answer, in nine cases out 
of ten, is conveyed in the word ' sport.' So cycling is called by 
its advocates 'the sport;' so the ambition of cyclists is to 
appear in the sporting columns of the newspapers as winners 
in the different competitions ; so the men, and for that matter 
the women too, who have made what is called the best < rec- 
ord' are thought to be the choicest representatives of cycling 

circles. 

u Ido not write these lines to complain against what has 
occurred in this way up to the present time. I am perfectly 
aware that the restless activity of those who have made cycling 
a sport has stirred up manufacturers to the exercise of their 
finest skill and choicest work in the matter of construction, and 
that the registry of the < record ' has produced not onty the 
registry of the best riders but of the best machines. This is 
all right in its way, and it may fairly be urged by the friends of 
the sport that but for it none of the grand mechanical successes 
would have been brought forth. In like manner the gentlemen 
of the turf argue that horse-racing keeps up the breed of the 
horses and the skill of the rider. 

"It is fair to go still further in concession to the modern 
cycling fraternity. It may and ought to be admitted that the 
racing they have encouraged has had in it no gambling charac- 
teristics ; that the rewards for winning have been of the sin> 



254 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

plest kind ; that money racing has been generally discouraged, 
and that men who would make a living by competition, and 
who come, in consequence, under the name of 'professionals,' 
are excluded from clubs and from competitions in which the 
amateur, as distinct from the professional, sentiment prevails. 

" These acknowledgments are as frankly as they are neces- 
sarily made. I do not for a moment wish to interfere with that 
competitive sport which, in a natural and healthy form, would 
keep healthy improvement at all times in its place ; but I and 
many others think that, if the art of cycling is to run altogether 
into ' sport ' and into a matter of comparative excellence in 
speed and endurance — in other words, into pace and pluck — 
it will of necessity bring results which will ruin it in regard to 
its health-giving qualities, its tone, and its usefulness. 

"Let me deal with the first of these points — the matter of 
health — as the chief one, and as governing the rest. 

' c The greatest benefit hitherto that has sprung from the art 
of cycling has been the good it has effected on the health of 
those who have practiced the art. I really know of nothing 
that has been so good for health. Men and women who, ten 
or fifteen years ago, were immured from one year's end to 
another in close towns, and who had little experience of country 
air and country landscapes, are now seen rushing in thousands 
yearly from the towns into the country, and enjoying all the 
natural advantages resultant from so important a change. By 
this course they have also made their own houses in the towns 
healthier, because they have left the confined intramural spaces 
in which they existed to be ventilated and recharged with 
fresher, if not with fresh, air. They have learned how to ven- 
tilate their own bodies, how to imbibe an air free of injurious 
vapors and particles, while they have developed a freedom and 
a strength of limb, and a mental pleasure and escape from care, 
which have been useful alike to mind and body. In addition, 
they have been gainers of many good and serviceable mental 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 255 

qualities. The little bit of risk or danger which attends the 
expedition has called up courage, attention, decision, and pres- 
ence of mind ; while the desire to perform some predetermined 
task has taught them how to keep up endurance. The true 
cockney has been quite transformed by the art of cycling, and 
in a very few years will be unknown even in Cockaigne. 

" We must accept this growing change, however, with all its 
drawbacks, and with no drawback less conspicuous than the 
fever and strain of competitive struggle. It seems to me that 
young and old, male and female, weak and strong, are all going 
wrong on this mania about records. If I could display the let- 
ters that are sent me, either making inquiries on the questions, 
what can and what cannot be undertaken by particular persons 
under particular circumstances, and what persons are wishing 
to attempt, or stating what persons have attempted to do or at 
all risks have done, the reader would not wonder that I am get- 
ting a little anxious about the future of what might be one of 
the most valuable of all the physical exercises ever invented. 
"The following are fair specimens of the dangers in view : 
" A gentleman seventy-eight years of age has started a tri- 
cycle. He finds to his intense surprise that he can ride from 
Brighton to Lewes without fatigue. That is about eleven miles. 
In a few days he discovers he can go to Lewes and back in the 
day without fatigue. A few days later he tries to do the same 
distance against time. He can do it in four hours. But there 
is a young fellow he knows — who, by the way, is only sixty 
years younger — who can do it in a little over two hours ; so why 
should he not come near to that mark also ? It is a mere matter 
ot practice and skill. So he does his best, and having no elas- 
tic tissue left in him fitted to give his lungs and blood-vessels 
good elasticity, he finds himself jarring all over like a ram- 
shackle old bone-shaking bicycle, and cannot get over the ' jolt- 
ing ' for a month, and dates a good deal of mischief from the 



i356 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

jolting, as if the machine, and not his ancient human machine,, 
were the thing at fault. 

' ' Here let me, in parenthesis, put in a memo before I forget 
it. Whenever a middle-aged rider, mounted on a good machine 
and riding on a good smooth road, feels jolting, it is the rider 
that is jolting, and he has ridden enough for that time. If he 
continue to oppose this admonition, he will be shaky and uncer- 
tain in movements and resolution for many after hours or days. 

"Another gentleman, not quite so old as the last, makes up 
his mind against distance. It is his firm determination to ride 
from London to Bath, one hundred miles, in a day. It is, he 
thinks, merely a matter of starting early in the morning, and 
taking the journey by easy stages. He does thirty-three miles 
as a trial right off, and feels ' as fresh as a daisy. ' After a little 
rest he is surprised to find he has a curious sinking at his stom- 
ach and can take no food. He says he was stopped in his effort 
by a bad fit of indigestion, which spoiled his riding for a fort- 
night, and rather set him against it altogether, because he could 
not go from London to Bath in a day like other people. 

"This suggests another mem. of much practical importance. 
Whenever a rider feels a sense of stomach- exhaustion from riding, 
is unable to take food with an appetite after the ride, or digests 
slowly after the ride, he is told as plain as these words can tell 
him that his nervous tone at the center of life, the stomach, ia 
exhausted, and that he had better do no more until he has 
rested completely and restudied the fable of ' The Belly and the 
Members.' 

U A middle-aged gentleman, who is engaged in sedentary 
occupation, and who is subject to occasional attacks of rheumatic 
gout, is advised, very properly, to take to the tricycle. He 
takes to it, and learning to do eight to ten miles per day, is 
quite astonished at the result. He feels like a new man. His 
spirits are so light, he works so well, he sleeps so well. He 
could not have believed that such a change for the better could 

(16) 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 25? 

have been effected. He waits for a holiday that he may get 
over a good deal more ground. Previous to the holiday, and 
indeed preparatory to it, he keeps close to office work, and then 
getting clear, he starts off for a tour. The first day he gets 
over bis thirty to forty miles, perspiring very freely. The next 
day he tries to repeat the experiment, and then, strangely 
enough, as he thinks, he is visited with a smart touch of his old 
enemy, the rheumatic gout, and is obliged to give up. 

U A third mem. of much practical meaning is suggested by 
the above-named experience. Whenever a man of sedentary 
habits, who is greatly benefited by the cycling exercise, taken 
in moderate and regular efforts, finds that he is getting premoni- 
tions of rheumatic affection — pains in his wrists and in other 
joints, feverishness, acidity, and restless desire for rest while 
cycling — he has an intimation of having done too much. lie 
has produced a degree of waste of his own muscular fibre 
beyond that which he can freely eliminate, and has made him- 
self rheumatic by his experiment. 

" These admonitions in respect to those who are of or beyond 
middle age, and which are drawn from direct observation of 
natural occurrences, extend, in another direction, to the younger 
members of the cycling fraternity. 

" Cycling, as an exercise and a sport, has not been in fashion 
long enough to enable us to see what may be the effects of it 
on the young who practice it excessively, and under special cir- 
cumstances of strain and fatigue. What has been made out so 
far is beyond any expectation in its favor. No other mode of 
progression at the same rate and for the same distance has ever 
been accomplished with the like freedom from actual exhaust- 
ion. To make a hundred miles a day on ordinary roads on a 
bicycle is now considered common-place amongst practiced 
riders, some of whom indeed sneer at two hundred as nothing 
very particular. One hundred miles in the twenty-four hours 

(17) 



358 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

on the tricycle ia one day looked upon as remarkable ; but in 
time Mr. Marriot rides one hundred and eighty-three miles, and 
has since beaten his own record by a ride of two hundred 
and nineteen. Even ladies have cast in their skill for these 
sharp and long tricycle rides, and one of them, Miss Allen, has 
accomplished one hundred and fifty-three miles within twenty- 
four hours. 

Ci These are results of a single day's work, taking us fairly 
by a surprise, which is only over-matched by what has been 
effected in short runs against time. 

"In short runs against time on the track, over twenty miles 
an hour has been made on the bicycle, over sixteen miles on 
.the tricycle. In short runs against time, on a level road, eigh- 
teen miles an hour has been made on the bicycle, fifteen on the 
tricycle. I have recently been a witness of the fact of twenty- 
five miles being accomplished on the bicycle on a hilly road, at 
fourteen miles an hour, by a rider who has not yet reached his 
twenty-first year. 

c 'The above two results admit of being compared with efforts 
made in endurance through long journeys, over the track or pre- 
pared firm level surface, and over common roads extending 
from one part of the country to the other, and of the most 
varied kinds of surface. In some of these efforts on tricycles, 
distances of seventy miles a day have been kept up for thirteen 
days, and John 0' Groats to Land's End has been traversed at 
this rate. On the bicycle the same journey has been accom- 
plished at the rate of over a hundred miles per day. 

" It took the famous anatomist, John Hunter, fourteen days 
to ride from Edinburgh to London on a fairly good horse. A 
modern bicyclist, in good training, would do the same 
journey in four days. It was considered a wonderful feat that 
Mrs. Siddons should one night play in London and the next 
night appear, thanks to the post-chaise, on the stage of the 
theatre at Bath. In these days a trained lady tricyclist might 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 259 

perform the same feat, in respect to the journeying, by her own 
unaided muscular efforts. 

u It is only fair to give due and proper praise to labors which 
have made these changes possible. I am quite aware, from 
having watched the course of improvements throughout, that 
the success has been attained by the courage, and what I may 
call the sport industry, of those who have ridden the modern 
machine. I am quite aware that these enthusiasts have been 
obliged to carry out their work under extreme disadvantages. 
I well remember reading a calculation from a man of science, 
who was thought to be, by no means, a contemptible reasoner, 
that it was positively impossible for any person to propel him- 
self on the best road at a greater pace and for a longer period 
than was possible by the simple act of walking. I also remem- 
ber what a machine it was that the early bicyclist, and still 
more, the tricyclist, had to begin upon in the early days of the 
art. I have seen how all these difficulties have been one by 
one met, and how the riders of machines, by their contests 
against time, distance, and endurance, have made the mechan- 
ical geniuses keep up with them. I thank those who have 
effected so much in the way of progress as sincerely as any one 
of their most ardent admirers. 

" There is, however, a danger of enthusiasm directed in one 
direction alone, and this enthusiasm is, I am sure, carrying the 
young cycling fraternity too fast and too furious in what they 
call their sport. It is true that in cycling there is an immense 
saving of vital organs, as compared with the strain which is put 
on those organs by other exercises, such as walking, running, 
climbing and rowing. In cycling the whole weight of the 
trunk of the body is taken off the lower limbs, while the 
concussion produced by the descent of the foot on the ground is 
saved — a great saving. In cycling there is no strain on the 
muscles of respiration in any ordinary effort. In cycling, there- 
fore, the lower limbs do the greater part of the work, and that 



260 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

without strain of tendon or friction on the sole of the foot or 
weariness felt at the ankle and knee. 

"Were there not these savings, there could be no accom- 
plishment of a tithe of what is commonly performed even by 
common-place riders. At the same time it is not all safe. Put- 
ting altogether aside the dangers which are apt to occur from 
falls and other physical accidents, there is, in extreme competi- 
tive strife, a strain which is, I am quite sure, most injurious to the 
organism, and which will, I confidently predict, tell seriously on 
the lives of several cyclists who are now carrying their exer- 
tions to an extreme in respect to strength, pace, and length of 
effort. In one man I can see the clear evidence of premature 
age induced solely by over-taxation and persistent training. In 
another I observe the excessive muscular growth in the muscles 
of the leg, like that which has been observed in the opera- 
dancer — a sign which, local though it may be, is a bad sign,, 
indicating an unequal development of the body, and what we 
doctors term hypertrophy of muscle, which will, in the end, 
lead to loss of balance of power in the affected parts. In a 
third I notice a pallor and vibration which indicates a disturb- 
ance that ought not to exist between the vascular and nervous 
systems. In a fourth 1 detect a restlessness and feverish anxiety 
which bodes no future good . And in many I am beginning to 
recognize a too nervous interest in everything that pertains to the 
sport to mean success to the maker of it or to the sport itself. 

"Most fortunately it has been discovered by the competitors, 
themselves that a perfectly temperate habit, in which the use 
of alcoholic poisons is excluded, is necessary for the best com- 
petition ; and in this discovery their lies a vein of safety which 
is largely assuring. Hard drinking cyclists would go to the hos- 
pital, the asylum, and the grave as fast as their machines could 
be made to carry them." 

Although it is very generally conceded, by those who have 
given the matter any attention, that the bicycle outranks every 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 261 

other means of outdoor exercise, yet as eminent a man as Sur- 
geon Frank H. Hamilton, of New York, has recently put him- 
self on record as a strong advocate of the saddle, giving it the 
preference over all other agents. He says : 

"Horse-back riding, out of doors, combines more qualities 
of healthful exercise than any other. It secures air, light, 
exercise and pleasure. 

"A horse — one horse a day — taken regularly, is both a pre- 
ventive and a cure for nearly all human maladies. To some, 
advice must be given to ride slowly; but to others we may say 
in the language of the old polypharmaceutists : ' When taken to 
be well shaken.' 

"No man can ride a spirited horse and calculate logarithms. 

"Advice to poor congregations: — Build a stable ; purchase 
a horse and saddle; endow the whole sufficiently, and when 
the horse is duly installed, install the pastor. This will save 
the necessity of a trip to Europe once in three years." The 
horse should by all means be a fiery one ; one whose control 
shall absorb the rider's energies. 

Professor Blackie, of the Edinburg University, has sugges- 
tions for those of all ages. He says: "For keeping the 
machine of the body in a fine poise of flexibility and firmness, 
nothing deserves a higher place than Games and Gymnastics. 
A regular constitutional walk, as it is called, before dinner, as 
practiced by many persons, has no doubt something formal 
about it, which not everybody knows to season with pleasant- 
ness : to those who feel the pressure of such formality, athletic 
games supply the necessary exercise along with a healthy social 
stimulus. For boys and young men, cricket; for persons of a 
quiet temperament, and staid old bachelors, bowls ; for all per- 
sons and all ages, the breezy Scottish game of golf is to be 
commended. Boating, of course, when not overdone, as it 
sometimes is in Oxford and Cambridge, is a manly and charac- 
teristically British exercise ; and the delicate management of 



262 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

sail and rudder as practiced in the Shetland and Hebridean 
seas, is an art which calls into play all the powers that belong 
to a prompt and vigorous manhood. Angling, again, is favor- 
able to musing and poetic imaginings, as the examples of Wal- 
ton andStoddart, and glorious John Wilson, largely show." 

Lawn Tennis, and ball and bat must not be forgotten. But 
if the latter mean for you the playing of base-ball, you must 
not grumble if you find yourself compelled to carry a crippled 
finger. Foot-ball would be a fine exercise if it were capable of 
being pursued with any sort of moderation. But to suggest 
temperate indulgence in foot-ball, is like advising a man to take 
his ice cream hot. 

There are certain exercises dependent upon special circum- 
stance which are heartily to be commended whenever their 
enjoyment is within our reach. Skating is a splendid sport, 
and an admirable means of exercise. Swimming in its proper 
season is altogether praiseworthy. Lord Byron was one of the 
best swimmers of modern times, and performed Leander's cele- 
brated feat of swimming from Abydos to Sestos. Beside, it is 
an accomplishment which no one who values his life can afford 
to be without. It is not so difficult an art as many imagine. 
When you think you can do it, you can do it. That shrewd 
old philosopher, Benjamin Franklin, saw clearly the real diffi- 
culty in the case when he advised the learner to "choose a 
place where clear water deepens gradually, to walk into it till 
it is up to his breast, to turn his face to the shore, and to throw 
an egg into the water between him and it — so deep that he can- 
not fetch it up but by diving To encourage him to take it up, 
he must reflect that his progress will be from deep to shallow 
water, and that at any time he may, by bringing his legs under 
him, and standing on the bottom, raise his head far above the 
water. He must then plunge under it, having his eyes open, 
before as well as after going under ; throw himself towards the 
egg^ and endeavor, by the action of his hands and feet against the 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 263 

water, to get forward till within reach of it. In this attempt, 
he will find that the water brings him up against his inclination, 
that it is not so easy to sink as he imagined, and that he cannot, 
but by force, get down to the egg. Thus he feels the power of 
water to support him, and learns to confide in that power; 
while his endeavors to overcome it, and reach the egg^ teach 
him the manner of acting on the water with his feet and hands, 
as he afterwards must in swimming, in order^to support his head 
higher above the water, or to go forward through it." It is 
somewhat surprising that the upright method of swimming, which 
gets its name from Bernardi, has not more rapidly come into 
vogue. Combining as it does greater ease, safety, and economy 
of strength, making possible the swimming of considerable dis-. 
tances, it were natural to suppose that it would gain a rapid popu- 
larity. "If, then, any person, however unacquainted with 
swimming, will hold himself perfectly still and upright, as if 
standing with his head somewhat thrown back so as to rest on 
the surface, his face will remain above the water, and he will 
enjoy full freedom of breathing. To do this most effectually, 
the head must be so far thrown back that the chin is higher 
than the forehead, the breast inflated, the back quite hollow, 
and the hands and arms kept under water. If these directions, 
be carefully observed, the face will float above the water, and: 
the body will settle in a diagonal direction. • 

i ' In this case, the only difficulty is to preserve the balance Of 
the body. This is secured as described by Bernardi, by extend- 
ing the arms laterally under the surface of the water, with the 
legs separated, the one to the front and the other behind : thus 
presenting resistance to any tendency of the body to incline to 
either side, forward or backward. This posture may be pre- 
served any length of time. 

"The principle reasons given by Bernardi for recommending ' 
the upright position in swimming are— its conformity to the accus 1 
tomed movement of the limbs ; the freedom it gives to the' 



261 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 





hands and arms, by which 
any impediment may be re- 
moved, or any offered aid 
readily laid hold of; vision 
ail around; a much greater 
facility of breathing; and 
lastly, that much less of the 
body is exposed to the risk of 
being laid hold of by persons 
struggling in the water. 

"The less we alter our 
method of advancing in the 
water from what is habitual to 
us on shore, the more easy do 

we find a continued exercise of it. The most important conse- 
quence of this is, that, though a person swimming in an upright 
posture advances more slowly, he is able to continue his course 
much longer ; and certainly nothing can be more beneficial to a 
swimmer than whatever tends to husband his strength, and to 
enable him to remain long in the water with safety. 

" The head is the great regulator of our movements in water. 
Its smallest inclination to either side instantly operates on the 
whole body ; and, if not corrected, throws it into a horizontal 
posture. The pupil must, therefore, restore any disturbance of 
equilibrium by a cautious movement of the head alone in an 
opposite direction. This first lesson being familiarized by 
practice, he is taught the use of the legs and arms for balancing 



THE PHYSICAL BALAHQB. 265 

the body in the water. One leg being stretched forward, the 
other backward, and the arms laterally, he soon finds himself 
steadily sustained, and independent of further aid in floating." 

Bernardi says: " Having been appointed to instruct the 
youths of the Royal Naval Academy of Naples in the art of 
swimming, a trial of the proficiency of the pupils took place, 
under the inspection of a number of people assembled on the 
shore for that purpose, on the tenth day of their instruction. A 
twelve-oared boat attended the progress of the pupils, from 
motives of precaution. They swam so far out in the bay, that 
at length the heads of the young men could with difficulty be 
discerned with the naked eye; and the Major General of 
Marine, Forteguerri, for whose inspection the exhibition was 
intended, expressed serious apprehensions for their safety. 
Upon their return to the shore, the young men, however, 
assured him that they felt so little exhausted as to be willing 
immediately to repeat the exertion." 

An official report of a commission of the Neapolitan govern- 
ment asserts : — 

" 1st. It has been established by the experience of more 
than a hundred persons of different bodily constitutions, that 
the human body is lighter than water, and consequently will 
float by nature ; but that the art of swimming must be acquired, 
to render that privilege useful. 

"2d. That Bernardi' s system is new, in so far as it is 
founded on the principle of husbanding the strength, and ren- 
dering the power of recruiting it easy. The speed, according 
to the new method, is no doubt diminished ; but security is 
much more important than speed ; and the new plan is nob 
■exclusive of the old, when occasion requires great effort. 

"3d. That the new method is sooner learnt than the old, to 
the extent of advancing a pupil in one day as far as a month's 
instruction on the old plan."* 

♦Walker's Manly Exercises. 



266 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

Sailing is a royal means of physical culture, and one of the 
best of vacation employments. A Boston man, who has given 
much attention to the science of health, as well as to business, 
jogs my elbow to say that " Salt water yachting knocks every- 
thing." When Boston trenches upon slang, the emphasis is 
great. ' l ' The Yoyage Alone in the Yawl Rob Roy ' tells 
how a man of education, a hard-worked London barrister, and 
withal an avowed, active Christian gentleman, who never 
feared to show his moral colors, spends his summer months in 
sailing for health. The book is more than an entertainment. 
He who reads it failing to recognize that it is intended to do 
missionary work among a population which treats the body 
worse than the prostrate Hindoo throng did before Juggernaut, 
does not comprehend the author's idea in writing. The fact 
that the little volume has run through edition after edition — 
that it has been the means of dotting the English waters with 
safe, comfortable, cheap little cruisers like the Rob Roy, shows 
that there was a need for it ; and more, that it filled a void in 
English intellectual life. * * * * 

"What are the special advantages of sailing from a sanitary 
point of view ? 

"First — It is a complete change in mode of life. 

u Second — It therefore brings rest in directions where mind 
and body were previously chiefly taxed. 

" Third — If properly conducted it enforces simple living, 
muscular exercise, early rising and in emergencies prompt deci- 
sion and speedy action, thus bringing increase of physical 
vigor. 

' ' Fourth — It is cheaper than an ordinary seaside resort, hav- 
ing beside all of the hygienic advantages with but few of the 
peculiar disadvantages. 

4 i Fifth — It gives rest to the eyes which continuous work at 
near distances has taxed, injured and often almost ruined."* 

*J. T. Rothrock in Our Continent. 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 267 

An illustration of this latter point was recently a matter of 
personal experience. After prolonged labor at near distances, 
happening to stand on a river bank, some discussion arose over 
the detail ol a small boat in course of construction on the oppo- 
site bank, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant. After half an 
hour's use at long range landscape objects, accident again 
directed attention to the boat, and the difference in definition 
was startling. What before was dim uncertainty was now per- 
fectly plain and distinct. 

It will be remarked that many of the forms of exercise 
suggested, carry with them certain possibilities of per- 
sonal danger. That they involve more or less risk of 
life and limb. There is no denying the justness of the 
observation. If I ride horseback, I may get my neck broken. 
If I sail, I may be overturned and drowned. If I ride a bicycle, 
I shall probably get more than one severe bump . But is it not 
fair to say that with reasonable care none of them are hazard- 
ous ? Is it not true that everything we do involves bodily risk ; 
and is it not true that the number of those who suffer injury or 
loss of life in manly recreation is as nothing compared with 
those who fall the victims of the ignominious assassination of 
the store and office ? But beyond all this is a something which is 
so greatly to be esteemed, that I would not take the danger out of 
these health pursuits if I could. There is a certain energy, 
spirit, fire, manly courage whose seed is planted within every 
man, and needs just this training to warm it into life, and 
secure its proper development. Without its noble possession, 
no man is worthy to be called a man. Who can abide a whim- 
pering boy? Why is it that all the manly boys are not killed 
outright times without number before they reach their majority, 
unless it be a kind Providence making provision for the unfold- 
ing of this choicest quality % Over-training in all manly vir- 
tues is impossible. It is the only way to strangle cowardice, 
and its masquerade, foolhardiness. 



268 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

In deciding upon a physical regimen, care must be taken that 
partiality to a single exercise does not lead to its exclusive 
practice, and a consequent ill-balanced development. We like 
to do that which we can do well, and are liable to be unduly 
swayed by this liking. The danger is greater with gymnasium 
work than with the various out-of-door forms of exercise, for it 
is found to lurk in the exercise of certain sets of muscles, rather 
than in the keen employment of the whole man. It follows 
motions, not pursuits. The latter imply all conceivable 
variety of exertion in all possible variety of position ; and when 
we have this, we have all that is desirable. It is natural that 
the warning should be sounded by a gymnasium man. Maclaren 
remarks: " I may state that this error of exclusive devotion 
to one exercise is not confined to rowing, nor committed solely 
by rowing men ; most men have a favorite exercise which they 
declare is i the finest in the world, ' and which thoy aver ' exercises 
every muscle of the body.' Now there is no single exercise 
invented or inventable by man, which gives employment to 
more than a part of the body, and to a very small part too, 
when closely examined ; and none, with which I am acquainted, 
which gives anything approaching to uniform employment even 
to the parts employed. The error lies not in men's having 
favorite exercises ; every man ought to have his favorite exer- 
cise, in which he excels or in which he strives to excel, in which 
he takes pride and in which he finds pleasure, just as he may 
have his favorite author or his favorite object of study ; yet not 
for exclusive reading, if he would have his whole mind cultivated 
or employed; and least of all should such exclusive devotion to 
one pursuit, mental or physical, be during the period of growth, 
when ultimate conformation of organ and capacity of function 
are mainly determined. ' ' Or, in the pat words of Dr. Hamil- 
ton, " a biceps hardened by the use of dumb-bells or by any 
other method, cannot be accepted as evidence that every mus- 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 269 

cle and organ in the body has had proper exercise, and that 
they are all now in good working order." 

But this discussion has already exceeded its proper limit and 
must come to a close. And its closing can only be a reit* 
eration and re-emphasizing of the original propositions — the 
necessity for physical culture, and its ability to redeem those 
who may seem to be arid think themselves to be, already physically 
lost. The great difficulty is to wake men up to its imperative 
need, its possibilities for good, its profits in dollars and cents. 
President Eliot, of Harvard, says that u To attain success and 
length of service in any of the learned professions, including 
that of teaching, a vigorous body is well-nigh essential. * * 
All professional biography teaches that to win lasting distinc- 
tion in sedentary, in-door occupations, which task the brain and 
the nervous system, extraordinary toughness of body must 
accompany extraordinary mental powers." We are not shut 
up to the accident of heredity in the matter of this "extraordi- 
nary toughness of body." We need not be fatalists. If ours 
be a hard fate, it is because we make it so. Max Muller says of 
Kant, that "though of a very slender constitution, all his life 
through he managed to keep himself in health by persistent 
adherence to certain maxims of diet and regimen." " In the 
great English Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, it has 
been proved by centuries of experience, that, as a rule, the 
most indefatigable scholars make better progress in their 
studies, if they take two hours out of their fourteen or sixteen 
working-hours for constitutional exercise in rowing, walking, or 
cricket, than if they attempt to perform mental work continu- 
ously, without allotting a proper period to mere bodily exer- 
tion." While these pages are passing through the press it has 
been my privilege to hear from the lips of Judge Albion W. 
Tourgee a magnificent plea for the physical in education. 
Going further than any physician dare, lest he be set down as a 
fanatic, he closed the discussion with the words, "If you can't 



270 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

give him both, for Heaven's sake give him the legsV* The 
secret of the "good fortune" which gave William Cullen Bry- 
ant his strength and stamina is found in the account which he 
gives of himself : " I promised to give you some account of 
my habits of life, so far, at least, as regards diet, exercise, and 
occupation. I have reached a pretty advanced period of life, 
without the usual infirmities of old age, and with my strength, 
activity, and bodily faculties generally in pretty good preserva- 
tion. How far this may be the effect of my way of life, 
adopted long ago, and steadily adhered to, is perhaps uncertain. 

"I rise early, at this time of the year about 5£; in summer, 
half an hour, or even an hour, earlier. Immediately, with 
very little incumbrance of clothing, I begin a series of exercises, 
for the most part designed to expand the chest, and at the same 
time call into action all the muscles and articulations of the 
A ody. These are performed with dumb-bells, the very lightest, 
^overed with flannel ; with a pole, a horizontal bar, and a light 
chair swung around my head. After a full hour, and some- 
times more, passed in this manner, I bathe from head to foot. 
When at my place in the country, I sometimes shorten my 
exercises in the chamber, and, going out, occupy myself for 
half an hour or more in some work which requires brisk exer- 
cise. After my bath, if breakfast be not ready, I sit down to 
my studies until I am called. 

"After breakfast I occupy myself for a while with my 
studies, and then, when in town, I walk down to the office of 
The Evening Post, nearly three miles distant, and after about 
three hours, return, always walking, whatsoever be the weather 
or the state of the streets. In the country I am engaged in my 
literary tasks till a feeling of weariness drives me out into the 
open air, and I go upon my farm or into the garden and prune the 
trees, or perform some other work about them which they need, 
and then go back to my books. I do not often drive out, pre- 
ferring to walk. 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 271 

• ' That I may rise early, I, of course, go to bed early : in 
town, as early as 10 ; in the country somewhat earlier. For 
many years I have avoided in the evening every kind of lit- 
erary occupation which tasks the faculties, such as composition, 
even to the writing of letters, for the reason that it excites the 
nervous system and prevents sound sleep. * I 

abominate all drugs and narcotics, and have always carefully 
avoided everything which spurs nature to exertions which it 
would not otherwise make. Even with my food I do not take 
the usual condiments, such as pepper and the like." 

4 ' Mr . W. F. A. Delane, who did so much for the organiza- 
tion of the Times newspaper when it was under his manage 
ment, began by doing law reports for that paper, in London and 
on circuit. His appearance of rude health surprised other 
members of his profession, but he acccounted for it by the care 
he took to compensate for the bad air and sedentary labor in 
the courts of law by traveling between the assize towns on 
horseback, and also by a more than commonly temperate way 
of life, since he carefully avoided the bar dinners, eating and 
drinking for health alone. It is possible to endure the most 
unhealthy labor when there are frequent intervals of invigorat- 
ing exercise, accompanied by habits of strict sobriety. The 
plan, so commonly resorted to, of trying to get health in stock 
for the rest of the year by a fortnight's hurried traveling in 
the autumn, is not so good as Mr. Delane's way of getting the 
week's supply of health during the course of the week itself. 

"It happened once that George Sand was hurried by the 
proprietor of a newspaper who wanted one of her novels as a 
feuilleton. She has always been a careful and deliberate 
worker, very anxious to give all necssary labor in preparation, 
and, like all such conscientious laborers she can scarcely endure 
to be pushed. However, on this occasion she worked over- 
time, as they say in Lancashire, and to enable herself to bear 
the extra pressure she did part of the work at night in order to 



272 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

keep several hours of daylight clear for her walks in the coun- 
try, where she lived. Many writers, in the same situation, 
would have temporarily abandoned exercise, but George Sand 
clung to it all the more at a time when it was especially neces- 
sary that she should be well. In the same way Sir Walter 
Scott counterbalanced the effects of sedentary occupation by his 
hearty enjoyment of field-sports. It has been supposed that his 
outdoor exercise, which to weaker persons appears excessive, 
may have helped to bring on the stroke of paralysis which 
finally disabled him ; but the fact is, that when the stroke 
arrived Sir AYalter had altered his habits of life in obedience to 
what he believed to be his duty, and had abandoned, or nearly 
so, the active amusements of his happier years. I believe 
rather that whilst he took so much exercise his robust constitu- 
tion not only enabled him to endure it without injury, but 
required it to keep the nervous system healthy, in spite of his 
hard work in literary composition. Physical exercise, when 
the constitution is strong enough to endure it, is by far the best 
tranquillizer of the nervous system which has yet been dis- 
covered, and Sir Walter's life at Abbotsford was, in this respect 
at least, grounded on the true philosophy of conduct. The 
French romancer, Eugene Sue, wrote till ten o'clock every 
morning, and passed the rest of the day, when at his country- 
house, either in horse-exercise, or field-sports, or gardening, for 
all of which he had a liking which amounted to passion. Shel- 
ley's delight was boating, which at once exercised his muscles 
and relieved his mind from the weariness of incessant invention 
or speculation. It will generally be found, that whenever a. 
man of much intellectual distinction has maintained his powers 
in full activity, it has been by avoiding the bad effects of an 
entirely sedentary life. * * * * 

" Scott was both a pedestrian and an equestrian traveler, 
having often, as he tells us, walked thirty miles or ridden a 
hundred in those rich and beautiful districts which afterwards- 



THE PHYSICAL BAXA.NCE. 



273 



proved to him such a mine of literary wealth. Geothe took a wild 
delight in al] sorts of physical exercise — swimming in the Ilm 
by moonlight, skating with the merry little Weimar court on 
the Schwansee, riding about the country on horseback, and 
becoming at times quite outrageous in the rich exuberance of 
his energy. Alexander Humboldt was delicate in his youth, 
but the longing for great enterprises made him dread the hin- 
drances of physical insufficiency, so he accustomed his body to 
exercise and fatigue, and prepared himself for those wonderful 
explorations which opened his great career. Here are intel- 
lectual lives which were forwarded in their special aims by 
habits of physical exercise ; and, in an earlier age, have we not 
also the example of the greatest intellect of a great epoch, the 
astonishing Leonardo da Yinci, who took such a delight in 
horsemanship that although, as Yasari tells us, poverty visited 
him often, he never could sell his horses or dismiss his grooms ? 

" The physical and intellectual lives are not incompatible. <T 
may go farther, and affirm that the physical activity of men 
eminent in literature has added abundance to their material and 
energy to their style ; that the activity of scientific men has led 
them to innumerable discoveries ; and that even the more sen- 
sitive and contemplative study of the fine arts has been carried 
to a higher perfection by artists who painted action in which 
they had had their part, or natural beauty which they had 
traveled far to see. Even philosophy itself owes much to mere 
physical courage and endurance. How much that is noblest in 
ancient thinking may be due to the hardy health of Socrates ! "* 

Would the name of Margaret Fuller ever have become a famil- 
iar one, had her prodigious energy been thwarted by a tumble- 
down shanty of a body \ When her father died, he left her 
under the necessity of earning her own livelihood. The story 
of the winter in Boston is told by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe : 
''Here is, in brief, the tale of her winter's work. (1836-7,) 

*The Intellectual Life. Philip Gilbert Hamerton (18) 



274 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

To one class she gave elementary instruction in German, and 
that so efficiently that her pupils were able to read the language 
with ease at the end of three months. With another class she 
read in twenty-four weeks Schiller's 'Don Carlos,' 'Artists' and 

* Song of the Bell '; Goethe's ' Herrman und Dorothea,' ' Gotz 
von Berlichingen,' 'Iphigenia,' the first part of 'Faust' and 
'Clavigo'; Lessing's 'Nathan der Weise,' 'Minna' and 

* Emilia Galotti'; parts of Tieck's 'Phantasus' and nearly all 
of the first volume of Richter's 'Titan.' With the Italian 
class she read parts of Tasso, Petrarch, Ariosto, Alfieri and 
the whole hundred cantos of Dante's 'Divina Oommedia.' 
Besides these classes she had also three private pupils, one of 
them a boy unable to use his eyes in study. She gave this 
child oral instructions in Latin, and read to him the history of 
England and Shakespeare's plays in connection. The lessons 
given by her in Mr. Alcott's school were, she says, valuable to 
her, but also very fatiguing. Though already so much overtasked, 
Margaret found time and strength to devote one evening every 
week to the viva voce translation of German authors for Dr. 
Channing's benefit, reading to him mostly from De Wette and 
Herder." 

However, it must be repeatedly insisted upon that these giant 
workers were not statues of adamant, exempt from the laws of 
animal life. Having obtained noble bodies, they gave them the 
care befitting their splendid service. They understood how to 
feed them with exercise — they were equally careful to renew 
them with rest. While we exalt the one to its lawful supremacy 
we must not forget to give the other its proper place. The 
strongest must have rest. Wordsworth is believed to have had 
a sound constitution . "His health at seventy-two was excel- 
lent." Yet when he was engaged in composing the "White 
Doe of Bylstone," "he received a wound in his foot, and he 
observed that the continuation of the literary labor increased 
the irritation of the wound ; whereas by suspending his work 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 275 

he could diminish it, and absolute mental rest produced a per- 
fect cure." "Many years ago the Hon. William D. Kelley 
and the father of Representative Randall were conversing with 
a famous Parisian doctor about health and longevity. The 
physician, turning abruptly to the then young Mr. Kelley, said : 
' Monsieur, if you will make it your rule^never to get exhausted 
so long as a part of the day remains in which you have any- 
thing to do, you will live to be as old as 1 am.' Judge Kelley 
followed this truly golden word of counsel, and with gratifying 
results, to which he often testifies." 

That rule applies to those who have, through the ministry of 
exercise and the lesser agencies of health, gotten a body worth 
resting. Too many begin the day with exhaustion. Some one 
has humorously suggested that in the most literal sense the 
confession of the prayer-book is true — "¥e have done those 
things which we ought not to have done ; we have left undone 
those things which we ought to have done, and there is no 
health in us." To all such the precept of the French doctor 
has no application. It would stop them before they begin. 
Unless, indeed, they set about so training their bodies up to 
the health standard, that they shall push the exhaustion- mark 
from the beginning of the day clear over to the evening. Thus 
we are brought back to face again the question of exercise. It 
is the crying need that will not down. It is the passport to 
rest; it is the great motor of labor — that engine which drives us to 
success. Doctors ancient and modern speak as with one voice. Du 
Bois-Reymond asserts that "equally whether we understand it 
or not, man is adapted to self-improvement by means of exercise. 
It makes his muscles stronger and more enduring; his skin 
becomes fortified against all injury ; through exercise his limbs 
become more flexible, his glands more productive. It fits his 
■central nerve-system for the most complicated functions ; it 
sharpens his senses, and by it his mind, reacting upon itself, is 
-enabled to augment its own elasticity and versatility." Dr. 



276 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

Hamilton testifies that "Exercise, or the use of every organ of 
the body, is necessary to the healthy and full performance of 
their functions. When any organ is in complete and prolonged 
disuse it tends inevitably to decay. A person whose mind has 
been actively employed all the day, in the counting-room, upon 
the bench, or in the study, needs in order to restore the balance, 
bodily exertion conjoined with complete mental relaxation." 
u Heroditus is said to have been the first who applied the exer- 
cises and regimen of the Gymnasium to the removal of disease, 
or the maintenance of health. Among the Romans, Asclepia- 
des carried this so far that he is said, by Celsus, almost to have- 
banished the use of internal remedies from his practice. He 
was the inventor of various modes of exercise and gestation, in 
Rome. In his own person, he afforded an excellent example of 
the wisdom of his rules, and the propriety of his regimen. 
Pliny tells us that, in early life, he made a public profession 
that he would agree to forfeit all pretensions to the name of a 
physician, should he ever suffer from sickness, or die but of old 
age ; and what is extraordinary, he fulfilled his promise, for he 
lived upwards of a century, and at last was killed by a fall, 
down stairs." Boerhaave, the greatest physician Holland ever 
knew, was moved to say ; — "When I reflect on the immunity of 
hard-working people from the effects of wrong and over-feeding 
I cannot help thinking that most of our fashionable diseases 
might be cured mechanically instead of chemically, by climbing 
a bitter wood- tree or chopping it down, if you like, rather than 
swallowing a decoction of its disgusting leaves." During his 
life he had in his possession a large volume with golden clasps, 
which he asserted contained all the secrets of medicine. Those 
opening it after his death found only these words written i 
"Keep the head cool, the feet warm, and the bowels open." 
Hamilton says that "health must be earned ; it can seldom be 
bought" Bichat's expression is a shade better: "We can 
not buy health ; we must deserve it." Herbart Spencer writes* 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 277 

that "Perhaps nothing will so mueh hasten the time when 
body and mind will both be adequately cared for, as a diffusion 
of the belief that the preservation of health is a duty. Few 
seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality. 
Men's habitual words and acts imply the idea that they 
are at liberty to treat their bodies as they please. Disorders 
•entailed by disobedience to Nature's dictates, they regard sim- 
ply as grievances : not as the effects of a conduct more or less 
flagitous. Though the evil consequences inflicted on their 
dependents, and on future generations, are often as great as 
those caused by crime ; yet they do not think themselves in 
any degree criminal. * The fact is, that all breaches 

of the laws of health are physical sins." Again, "People are 
beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life, is to 
be a good animal." 

The men of olden time understood this. "The orators, 
philosophers, poets, warriors, and statesmen of Greece and 
Home gained strength of mind as well as muscle by the system- 
atic drill of the palaestra. The brain was filled thereby with 
a quick-pulsing and finely oxygenated blood, the nerves made 
healthy and strong, the digestion sharp and powerful, and the 
whole physical man, as the statues of antiquity show, developed 
into the fullest health and vigor. It is told of Cicero that he 
became, at one period of his life, a victim of that train of mala- 
dies expressed by the word 'dyspepsia,' — maladies which pur- 
sue the indolent and the overworked man as the shark follows 
in the wake of the plague-ship. The orator hastened, not to 
the physicians, which might have hastened his death, but to 
Greece ; flung himself into the gymnasium ; submitted to its 
regimen for two entire years ; and returned to the struggles of 
the forum as vigorous as the peasants that tilled his farm. 
Who doubts that, by this means, his periods were rounded out 
to a more majestic cadence, and his crushing arguments clinched 
with a tighter grasp ? Had he remained a dyspeptic, he might 



278 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

have written beautiful essays on old age and friendship, but he 
never would have pulverized Catiline, or blasted Antony with 
his lightnings. Everything shows that the greatness of our 
great men is as much a bodily affair as a mental one. Nature 
presented our Websters, Clays, and Calhouns, not only with 
extraordinary minds, but— what has quite as much to do with 
the matter — with wonderful bodies. Above all, our Grants, 
Shermans, and Sheridans, what would they be without nerves 
of whipcord and frames of iron ? Let Napoleon answer. The 
tortures of hereditary disease, united with the pangs of fever, 
wrung from that great captain, in one of the most critical days 
of his history, the exclamation that the first requisite of good 
generalship is good health."* 

" Force begets fortitude and conquers Fortune," are the 
words of Helvetius. " Some pathologists maintain that there 
is but one essential proximate cause of disease, viz., the loss of 
vital resistance and the enlargement of the capillary vessels." 
"I beseech you to remember," urges Garfield before the 
Hiram students, "that the genius of success is still the genius 
of labor." " Any success you may achieve is not worth the 
having unless you fight for it," he insists before the Washing- 
ton students. Success everywhere depends upon a good fight- 
ing trim. " Thrilling voices breathe from the monuments of the 
mighty dead and thunder through the dome of fame the truth 
that Determination, Strength and Perseverance are the three 
Champions of the World." 

"It is said that the Duke of Wellington, when once looking 
on at the boys engaged in their sports, in the playground at 
Eton, made the remark, l It was there that the battle of Water- 
loo was won.' " 

" That the splendid empires which England has founded in 
every quarter of the globe have had their origin largely in the 
foot-ball contests at Eton, the boat-races on the Thames, and the 

*G-etting On in the WorJd. Matthews. 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 279 

cricket- matches on her downs and heaths, who can doubt? The 
race so widely dominant, — 'whose morning drum-beat, follow- 
ing the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the 
earth with one continual, unbroken strain of the martial airs of 
England,' — is dominant because its institutions cultivate self- 
reliance, and its breeding develops endurance, courage, and 
pluck." 

There is a hot weather saying in Europe about tl everything 
being asleep in the shade but dogs and Englishmen." Such a 
reputation as this must be earned, it is not accidental. It 
means an honest physical history. It means that while Britons 
are earning this reputation abroad, at home Professor Blackie 
is urging that "every young student ought to make a sacred 
resolution to move about in the open air at least two hours 
every day," and a reverend gentleman of Oxford is writing an 
exhaustive paper on sliding seats as applied to rowing, and their 
influence on oarsmen. 

"England expects every man to do his duty. " Yet the phys- 
ical millennium has by no means come, even in England. Dur- 
ing the year 1881, according to the Registrar-General's report, 
139 persons for every 100,000 of the population of Scotland 
died of old age, and only 111 for every 100,000 of the popula- 
tion of England. 

How pitiful a spectacle does Dean Swift present. " ' I shall 
die first a-top,' was his mournful exclamation, as he gazed on a 
noble oak whose upper branches had been struck by lightning ; 
' I shall be like that tree, 1 shall die first a-top. ' Afflicted for 
years with giddiness and pain in the head, he looked forward 
with prophetic dread to insanity as the probable termination of 
his existance ; and after nine years of mental and bodily suffer- 
ing, the great satirist, the mighty polemic, the wit and the 
poet, died as he had feared and half predicted, ' in a rage, like 
a poisoned rat in a hole.' " How painful the picture of Horace' 
Bushnell, sketched by his daughter. "At the dinner-table he 



280 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

came to us from his thought-world, from the writing of sermons 
or books ; and then he was no more of the outward, but ol' the 
subjective and inward life. Then his every hair stood on end. 
electric with thought ; his eyes had a tixed and absent look, and 
he forgot the name of a potato. His mind being far away, the 
present body fed itself hastily, and with little note of food or 
drink. It was no wonder that he experienced the horrors of 
dyspepsia. But for the enforced exercise of the afternoon, he 
would have been earlier the victim of untimely brain work." 
Was not that a sad confession of Kufus Choate's, that "latterly 
he hadn't much of any constitution, but simply lived under the 
by-laws." He died at fifty-five. "Cuvier's paralysis came upon 
him whilst he was still in full activity, and death prevented him 
from arranging a great accumulation of scientific material. He 

• said to M. Pasquier, ' I had great things still to do ; all was 
ready in my head. After thirty years of labor and research, 
there remained but to write, and now the hands fail, and carry 
with them the head.' " We must not think of permitting an 
internecine strife between our faculties. We must free our- 
selves from the tyranny of circumstance, that we be not com- 
pelled to make the reply of Dr. J. W. Alexander. To the 
question whether he enjoyed the full assurance of faith, he 
replied, kt I think I do, except when the wind is from the East." 

: Shall it not be our ambition to have it said of us as Tennyson 
says of the Duke of Wellington, u He stood four-square to all 
the winds that blew." " Few men will claim that they are bet- 
ter workers than he was, or that they get through more in a 
day or year, or that, heavy as their responsibilities may be, 
they surpass or even equal those which were his for years 
together. Yet all the terrible mental strain this illustrious 
man underwent, battling with one of the greatest captains this 
world ever saw, all the exposure and forced marching, privation 
and toil, which come to the faithful soldier, and to him who 
holds the lives of multitudes in his hands, this man knew, and 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 281 

yet so c mtrolled his work, exacting as it all was, as to manage 
to keep his body superior to all it was called on to do, and his 
mind in constant working order, and this not merely up to three 
score and ten, but to four score good years, and three more 
besides." Would we not be like the giants. "Peel, Brougham, 
Lyndhurst, Campbell, Bright, Gladstone, — nearly all the great 
political and legal leaders, the prodigious workers at the bar and 
in the senate, — have been full-chested men, who have been as 
sedulous to train their bodies as to train their intellects." 
" Charles Dickens, who probably performed as much and as 
satisfactory work in his lifetime as any man who ever lived, 
was able to make time for an almost daily ten-mile walk, to 
which he invariably resorted when he felt out of sorts and in 
poor spirits." "Sydney Smith tells public speakers that if 
they would walk twelve miles before speaking, they would 
never break down." "Latimer and Luther were stalwart 
men, who could have knocked down an opponent first, and put 
him down in argument afterwards." "Had the sturdy, prize- 
fighter make of Martin Luther nothing to do with his contempt 
for the danger awaiting his appearance before Charles Y. and 
his Diet of Worms, and which caused him to say he would go 
there though the devils were as thick as the tiles on the houses ; 
and with the grand stand he made for the religious light which 
now shines so freely upon the whole Christian world?" "Mar- 
tin Luther," says Talmadge, "was so mighty for God, first, 
because he had a noble soul, and secondly, because he had a 
muscular development which would have enabled him to thrash 
-any five of his persecutors, if it had been Christian so to do." 
* ; On his campaign against a horde of northern barbarians, one 
of Trajan's generals attempted to scare, or at least to astonish, 
the natives by shipping a troop of lions across the Danube. 
But the children of nature declined to marvel : ' They mis- 
took them for dogs,' says the historian, c and knocked their 
brains out.'" "James Guthrie, first tying one hand behind 



282 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

him, with the other could whip any man in Oxford who would 
also fight one-handed. Who doubts that the vigor so 
evinced had much to do with the faithful, arduous life's work 
he did, and did so well that all Scotland is to-day justly proud 
of him?" "Have not the great bodies of those two young 
giants of the American pulpit, Phillips Brooks and Joseph 
Cook, proved most valuable accessories to their great brains 1 " 
Who doubts that the rugged physique born of a frontier life 
had much to do with the fact that Zachary Taylor "never knew 
when he was whipped." Leonardo da Yinci, the engineer, 
architect, sculptor, and painter, who could draw a perfect circle 
with his unaided hand, "could not the less break a silver 
piaster between his two thumbs and two fore-fingers;" and 
"often astounded his visitors by jumping to the ceiling and 
knocking his feet against the bells of a glass chandelier." 
Look at this picture of Bismarck. "He is a powerful man. 
That is what strikes at once everyone who sees him for the first 
time. He is very tall and of enormous weight, but not 
ungainly. Every part of his gigantic frame is well-propor- 
tioned — -the large round head, the massive neck, the broad 
shoulders, and the vigorous limbs. He is now more than sixty- 
three, and the burden he has had to bear has been usually 
heavy ; but though his step has become slow and ponderous, 
he carries his head high — looking down, even, on those who 
are as tall as himself — and his figure is still erect. During 
these latter years he has suffered frequent and severe bodily 
pain, but no one could look upon him as an old man, or as one 
to be pitied. On the contrary, everybody who sees him feels 
that Prince Bismarck is still in possession of immense physical 
power." Who can know these things without the ambition to 
be a man in every sense of the word, rising high within him. 
The story is told of a young lady who fainted at the mention of 
"undressed lumber; " and there are plenty of namby-pamby 
young men who would faint just as easily at the idea of hand- 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 283 

ling it as a means of earning their living. Would it not be well 
for them were they for a little while under the training of old 
McDonald of Keppoch, the Scottish chief, "of whom it is 
told that, camping out one night with a portion of his clan, he 
went and kicked the snow from under his son's head, — which 
the youth had piled together so as to form a sort of pillow, — 
declaring that 'the young rascal, by his degenerate effeminacy, 
would bring disgrace on the clan.' " 

It is true beyond question that the preservation of the phys- 
ical balance is the foundation of all success. Perfect mental 
equipoise and extended mental labor are impossible without it. 
Yet this is not the reason that its extended discussion is 
admitted here. It is so recognized because this is the strongest 
motive which can be urged for the intelligent care of the bod} T . 
The real right of title by which this subject holds these many 
pages, is found in the fact that physical balance means a 
normal reproductive apparatus. Loss of physical balance 
means an irritated, over- excitable, harrassing reproductive appa- 
ratus. The whole question whether you shall be the proud 
ruler of your own reproductive system, or the humiliated slave 
of its tyranny, finds almost complete answer here. He who is 
owned by a sexual organism is a weak, useless, lying, cow- 
ardly bundle of vileness. The man who possesses the procreative 
power is he of the knightly spirit within the physical citadel. 
He mistakes lions for dogs and dispatches them accordingly, 
and feels no temptation to take refuge from any difficulty in 
cowardice or mendacity. Without this citadel you cannot hold 
your knighthood, for it will be at the mercy of constant attack 
from all sorts of depraved marauders. If you will not take 
pains to build up this citadel, you will suffer in the very quality 
of your inner self, and your work will correspondingly deterio- 
rate in quality as well as quantity. There is no way but by 
faithful physical culture, that you can build up brain, body and 
self-control, the three interdependent pillars of character. 



284 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

Drugs and doctors can never do the work. You may have an 
attack of cholera morbus, and the doctor can help you out. 
But all the drugs in the Materia Medica never imparted the 
elasticity and nobility of health . Ponce de Leon never found 
his spring of perpetual youth, and all the doctors since 
have never been able to find it, and the chances are that we 
shall never be able to bamboozle nature into believing that 
any potion we may offer her is the blood and nerve and tone 
and elixir of life. And I take it for granted that de Leon did 
not look for any such constipated, headachey, slim, pale, 
squeezed-lemon sort of youth in his spring as we see far too 
often to-day. It is no disgrace to inherit delicate bodies, 
but it is just as much a disgrace not to train up that body in the 
way it should go, as it is to leave the mind and heart uncul- 
tured, just exactly. It is just as creditable to let the mind run 
to seed, as it is to let the body sprawl around in this world as if 
it were some huge misshapen spider, which had to be stepped 
upon before it could attain the estate most agreeable to the civ- 
ilization of to-day . 

Having by faithful care won physical vigor, do not squander 
it in your work. Do one thing at a time. Don't be doing half 
a dozen things at the same time all day, doing nothing well, 
and coming out at night tired and dispirited and distracted. If 
the world be coming to an end, you will accomplish more and 
work faster by doing one thing at a time. Decide with definite 
arbitration whether this individual thing shall be done next, 
and then do it thoroughly and calmly while all the world 
waits. Have definite habits of study and reading. Do 
not take up the last Review and wander through it, laying it 
down with a sigh that there is so much to know, and a discour- 
aged brain which knows nothing positively that was between its 
covers. Decide relentlessly what you can afford to read, and read 
it, letting no sentence slip by half-understood, and when you have 
finished, your brain will be stimulated by the exercise, and the 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 285 

consciousness that it knows just what the eyes have read. 
Habits of accuracy in work will wonderfully lessen its strain. 
Discountenance the blues. Care is an enemy to life. 

"Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt ; 
And every grin, so merry, draws one out." 

Don't worry — worry kills more men than work. With artery 
and nerve and sinew of even pulse and equal tension and elastic 
strength, with brain buttressed by a balanced body, built up by 
the boldest discipline, mobilized by methodical accuracy of 
work and study, you will find yourself translated into another 
life whose radiance is beyond the poor compliment of words, 
whose peace noweth like a river, whose purposes satisfy, whose 
hope faileth not, whose love is supernal. If there be those 
who entertain grave doubt of their ability to meet the drafts 
made upon the successful man of to-day in the sedentary occu- 
pations, even though they strive to live rightly, I would 
remind them that the mawkish sentimentality of the day which 
exalts the commercial and professional pursuits, and degrades 
manual labor is one of the most contemptible jingoisms that 
ever assumed the epidemic type. I should much rather catch 
the itch, than be the victim of a contagion so loathsome that it 
withers common sense and blasts true-heartedness. Give me 
an outer covering of scabs beneath which is a sturdy, genuine, 
great-hearted manhood, rather than a skin of velvet which 
encloses a religion of kid gloves, a morality of cologne, a heart 
of corsets, an intellect of neck-ties, and a soul upon the 
walls of whose chambers is found no inscription save in 
listless hand the one word, "Self." A few weeks ago a 
friend told me that he had just been up in Northern Dakota, 
had seen the great Dalrymple farm, and had counted in one 
day sixty reapers at work gathering in the harvests of that one 
farm. And I said to myself, I wish I could tell that to every 
young man in our country. It seems to me that it might open 
the eyes of that great multitude of young men who are saying 



286 THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 

to themselves, u There are just two things before me, life in a 
large city, or a perpetual badge of inferiority." And the voice 
of Newman Hall sounds in my ear clear and strong, across the 
wild waves of the Atlantic, as he declares, " There is dignity in 
toil — in toil of the hand as well as toil of the head — in toil to 
provide for the bodily wants of an individual life, as well as in 
toil to promote some enterprise of world-wide fame. All labor 
that tends to supply man's wants, to increase man's happiness, 
to elevate man's nature — in a word, all labor that is honest — 
is honorable too. Labor clears the forest, and drains the morass, 
and makes 'the wilderness rejoice and blossom as the rose.' " 
And the mighty voice of our own nobleman, Horace Mann, 
makes answer from this side of the ocean. u Let the young 
remember there is nothing derogatory in any employment which 
ministers to the well-being of the race. It is the spirit that is 
•arried into an employment that elevates or degrades it. The 
ploughman that turns the clod may be a Cincinnatus or a 
Washington, or he may be brother to the clod he turns. 

"No matter what may be the fortunes or the expectations of 
a young man, he has no right to live a life of idleness. In a 
world so full as this of incitements to exertion, and of rewards 
for achievement, idleness is the most absurb of absurdities, and 
the most shameful of shames. In such a world as ours, the 
idle man is not so much a biped as a bivalve ; and the wealth 
which breeds idleness — of which the English peerage is an 
example, and of which we are beginning to abound in speci- 
mens in this country — is only a sort of human oyster-bed, where 
heirs and heiresses are planted, to spend a contemptible life ot 
slothfulness in growing plump and succulent for the grave- 
worm's banquet." 

So let me say to every young man who may see this page. 
There is no doubt about it. You are fitted for some work, — a 
work of hands or head, it matters not which, so long as you put 
a true heart into it whichever it may be ; — a noble work, to be 



THE PHYSICAL BALANCE. 287 

•done in noble spirit, not with galled shoulders and a jaded 
spirit ; — a work which you are competent to perform and to 
which you are equal ; — a work which no one else in the great 
round world can do quite as well as yourself, for it is the work 
given to you individually to do ; — a work the doing of which in 
its every day insignificance of detail, with ali nobility of 
purpose and singleness of heart shall inevitably lead you up 
toward the perfect Pattern, until that sunrise come whose trum- 
pet shall sound the reveille calling you to a new life, and you 
awake to find that all unconsciously you have through simple 
faithfulness, attained the full stature of princely manhood. 

"Is there, for honest poverty, 

That hangs his head, an' a' that ? 
The coward slave we pass him by, 
We dare be poor for a' that ! 

For a* that, an' a' that, 

Our toil 's obscure, an' a' that ; 

The rank is but the guinea's stamp, 

The man 's the gowd for a' that. 

" Then let us pray that come it may, 
As come it will for a' that, 
That sense an' worth, o'er a' the earth, 
May bear the gree, an* a' that. 

For a' that, an' a' that, 
It 's coming yet, for a' that, 
That man to man, the warld o'er, 
Shall brothers be for a' that." 



CHAPTER VI 



OELIBAOY. 



That celibacy which would steal the crown from marriage is 
guilty of high treason. That celibacy which sees nothing to be 
desired with a great desire in the home, and the family which 
creates the home, is lit only to be strangled. So, paradoxical 
though it may seem, the only fitting introduction to a discussion 
of celibacy, is an anthem in honor of marriage. Let all the 
watchmen upon the walls of our American Republic cry aloud 
and say, Blessed be every man who is married ; blessed be 
every man by whose side stands a loving, true-hearted woman ; 
blessed be every man whose crown of glory and of gladness is 
his wife, with children the jewelled setting thereof. Cursed be 
every man whose bleared and bloodshot eye sees not the divine 
presence hovering over this Ark of the Covenant; whose 
blasted and withered heart is not capable of bringing any offering 
to this altar of sacrifice. Cursed be every Nadab and Abihu 
who approaches this holy of holies with boisterous profanation ; 
who in his heart of hearts greets thought of it with nothing but 
ribaldry. So let the watchmen cry, and let all the people 
answer, Amen and amen. And as we go on to speak of 
celebacy, and accord to it the high rank it deserves, — a peerage, 
speaking to us most eloquently by the pathetic voice of its 
enforced loneliness and isolation, — let it be understood that it 
is of the loyal celibacy we always speak. Disloyal celibacy 
has no possible merit, and no plausible defense. It is a stench in 
the nostrils of all right-minded people. But there is a celibacy 
worthy of the highest honor. It accords to marriage and the 



CELIBACY. 289 

family the most exalted position. It gladly recognizes the 
home as both the promise and fulfilment of all that is best 
in human society. It is great and noble because marriage is 
greater and nobler. During the dark days in the "60s" we 
could not afford to let President Lincoln shoulder a musket and 
go to the front. In no other way could he have so proved his 
loyalty, his soldierly qualities, as he did by sticking to his post 
in Washington. So we speak of that celibacy which proves its. 
loyalty by its very bachelorhood. Between such a celibacy and 
marriage there is no antithesis. They are twin virtues. "No" 
man ever lived a right life who had not been chastened by a 
woman's love, strengthened by her courage and guided by her 
discretion," says Ruskin. And the loyal heart, even though it 
be solitary, is not shut out by this saying, from a right life. 
Who can find an honest heart anywhere, fenced in by a wall of 
isolation though it be, that has not with it in its prison-house, 
mother, or sister, or shrine-centered memory ? " I met in the 
street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was 
old, his coat was threadbare : there were holes in his elbows : 
the water passed through his shoes, and the stars through his 
soul." 

The enactments which have been aimed against celibacy, 
form a curious chapter in the history of law. It is, it always 
has been, and in the nature of the case it always will be the 
policy of the State to encourage marriage. At the present day 
and in this country the laws discriminating between marriage 
and celibacy consist only in certain exemptions, (of homestead, 
and the means of earning a livelihood), from attachment for 
debt, which are granted to the married man. But in other 
times, and in earlier days, no such thing as an upright celibacy 
was recognized. So it came about that, when set over against 
each other, marriage was everywhere honored and celibacy stig- 
matized. "The Jews excluded bachelors from assemblies of 

(19) 



290 CELIBACY. 

the people. The Spartans interdicted them the theaters, and 
had a festival in which the women scourged them in the public 
places. The Romans did not receive their testimony in courts 
of justice ; they solemnly crowned the virtuous citizens who 
had contracted many successive marriages. In the first era of 
Christianity, celibacy was a cause of inaptitude for public func- 
tions. For a long time in Germany, in Switzerland, the fort- 
unes of bachelors reverted to the State after their death. In 
other countries, they were subjected to .a tax.*" In Turkey they 
are under rigorous governmental restraint to this day. "Prob- 
ably no bachelor on earth knows so few of the delights of that 
ordinarily lawless and delightful condition as he of Turkey. Be 
he young or gray-headed it is all the same. Church and State 
are both against him. He must live with his parents, and 
while thus under tutors and governors the authorities content 
themselves with periodical reprobation of his manners and 
customs. But let him become an orphan, as in time he must, 
and his troubles begin. No householder may take a young 
tnan into his family without special permission from the civil 
authorities, and before this is granted, the landlord must be 
able to prove that the lodger can be waited on with no outrage 
to morals — that is, with no employment of the female members 
of the family. Should he take a house himself he is forbidden 
to live in it unless a sister or an elderly aunt is in charge ; if not 
he must live as he can till somebody, for love or money, pro- 
vides him a chaperone or some ancient woman who can play 
propriety. And even when secured the office includes also that 
of domestic spy, every word and act being reported to all the 
muftis and cadis and imams and ulemas, who, till he sets up a 
harem, regard him as given over to all iniquity, "f 

If the courts were competent to decide the question whether, 
in a given case, the celibacy were honorable or dishonorable, I 

*Our Continent. 
f Bourgeois. 






CELIBACY. 291 

fancy we should profit by the enforcement of regulations as 
severe, even, as those of Turkey. Nor are those who, by lives 
of lawless lust, do all that one individual can do to break down 
that purity and good order of society without which society 
could not be, the only ones deserving of censure. There is 
another class of celibates who live irreproachable lives so far 
as any overt act against the integrity of the fabric of society is 
concerned, who yet nurse within themselves a certain shallow, 
supercilious, unworthy estimate of marriage. They put upon 
it a mild contempt. They treat it with indifference. In their 
view it is not a matter of any great moment. It is well enough 
for those who think they want that sort of thing. But as for 
themselves, they would rather be excused. Blind to the glory, 
insensible to the joy, ignorant ot the nobility, vacant of any 
just conceptions of the divine institution of home and 
the family, the best that is in them becomes eaten out and 
shrunken by a dry rot; and, worse than all, their influence 
upon the } T outh with whom they come in contact, hidden behind 
the endorsement of an outwardly correct life, is pernicious and 
demoralizing in the extreme. Blind leaders of the blind, how 
can they escape the ditch ! There is among my acquaintance 
a well-educated, brilliant, handsome, fast-rising physician who 
is to-day a single man because of this very disloyalty, and' I 
cannot think of him without blushing in very shame for him 
and for his treason. 

But I have no words to express my admiration for the grand 
army of single men who for the truest reasons are fighting the 
battle of life single-handed and alone; who have "through 
faith wrought righteousness, out of weakness were made strong, 
waxed valiant in fight, and turned to flight the armies of the 
aliens." They are a noble company. In it we find the youth, 
who in the vigor of a new-found manhood, must yet lead a 
grand, continent, celibate life, from twelve or fifteen to twenty 
five — a service worthy the endurance of a veteran hardness. 



292 CELIBACY. 

The ranks too are full of those who have attained the full 
stature of perfect manhood, kept in the service by reasons 
which their hearts alone know. To one poverty has said wait, 
and from the illumined countenance of high resolve has come 
the prompt reply, 1 will wait. To another filial duty has whis- 
pered wait, and the ringing answer has come swiftly, I am glad to 
wait ; and he fills with cheer the declining years of the aged 
Father and Mother. There are hundreds in the rank and file to 
whom has been issued the order which Frederick the Great made 
his motto of earlier years, " Not yet," and right royally are they 
obeying orders like the good soldiers that they are. And who 
would be so sacrilegious as to attempt to tell the number of 
those whose deeply hidden hearts repeat the words of Tenny- 
son ; — 



Shy she was, and I thought her cold ; 

Thought her proud, and fled over the sea ; 
Fiird I was with folly and spite, 

When Ellen Adair was dying for me. 



" There I put my face in the grass— 
Whisper'd, ' Listen to my despair 
I repent me of all I did : 
Speak a little, Ellen Adair ! ' 



Then I took a pencil and wrote 
On the mossy stone, as I lay, 

Here lies the body of Ellen Adair ; 
And here the heart of Edward Gray I ' 



Love may come, and love may go, 
And fly, like a bird, from tree to tree 

But I will love no more, no more, 
Till Ellen Adair come back to me." 



CELIBACY. 293 

Who shall tell us how many devoted lives are chanting with 

Burns, 

"Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, 
Flow gently, 111 sing thee a song in thy praise ; 
My Mary 's asleep by thy murmuring stream, 
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream. 



4 * Thou stock-dove whose echo resounds thro' the glen, 
Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den, 
Thou green-crested lapwing thy screaming forbear, 
I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair. 



"Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, 
Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays ; 
My Mary 's asleep by thy murmuring stream, 
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream." 

All honor to the loyal and the true when they receive the 
winsome crown of wife and children. All honor to the loyal 
and the true when they receive the sorrowful crown of isolation. 
I do not for a moment doubt that the great Father over all has 
most wisely planned for the great multitude of His children in 
that He " setteth the solitary in families," and that by this 
agency He rounds out into fuller perfection the characters of 
men. For without this indescribable home influence we are in 
great danger of becoming narrow and one-sided and belittled. 
But when He seems to lead one of us in the other direction how 
should we u covet earnestly the best gifts " that we may not lose 
what should come to us through this sterner discipline which 
He has seen to bo the best for us. The natural way of life is in 
the family; if we must walk outside this charmed circle, in the 
way which is the less natural, how much greater the manliness 
which must always be within us, that the special discipline do 
not break us down like the raw recruit in the gymnasium, but 
lead us on from strength to strength, until as approved gladia- 
tors we daily meet in gallant conflict all those wild and savage 



294: CELIBACY. 

beasts which are let locse within the arena of the human heart- 
Do not, however, make the mistake of supposing that this 
training calls for the banishment of the finer feelings. 

"A millstone and the human heart are driven ever round ; 
If they have nothing else to grind, they must themselves be ground." 

The gladiator must have a strong heart underneath his tunic, 
or the contest is lost ere it be begun. The celibate must have 
a big, warm, tender heart which welcomes all the world, yet 
stumbles not at the saying that " One, and one only, is the 
lover's creed," or he has missed the uplift which should have 
come to him through his isolation. Surrounded by the family, 
or hid in solitude, the heart should have equal, if not identical 
treasure. The only difference is in the depth of the mine at 
the bottom of which it lies in its unsuspected brightness and 
purity. I care not what name you give these heart qualities . 
Sum them up under the one word love, if you like. But one 
thing is certain. Without this central motor power the whole 
man is at a stand-still. With it, anything, everything becomes 
possible to him. 

"Ah, how skilful grows the hand 
That obeyeth Love's command ! 
It is the heart, and not the brain, 
That to the highest doth attain, 
And he who followeth Love's behest 
Far excelleth all the rest ! " 

The many pass through life with this inspiration incarnated 
and walking by their side . The few must walk alone as far as 
our outward vision can behold them, but if they bear themselves 
valiantly we may be sure that the same inspiration walks with 
them. But the spirit feet tread so noiselessly that we hear 
them not, the spirit hand that leads and supports we do not 
see, the spirit voice whispers so softly that we hear it not, and 
we wonder at the difficulties conquered and the heights attained 



CELIBACY. 295 

by one whom, we fancied, walked alone. It is a grand attain- 
ment to be able to walk by the unseen when the incarnate is 
denied us ; to walk by faith when sight is withheld from us . 
For the advantage of all this overcoming of difficulties, of all 
this discipline as we call it, is in the broadening and deepening 
and strengthening of all those qualities which go to make up 
the thoroughly manly man. We group together these qualities 
and call them character. And the growth of these qualities— 
of character — is dependent upon just such homely, every-day 
besetments as surround the single man, in what seems to him a 
most unattractive array. But we must not be too quickly impa- 
tient of those opportunities which come to us in a truly home- 
spun disguise. ' 'Self-denial and discipline are the foundation of all 
good character, the source of all true enjoyment, the means of all 
just distinction. This is the invariable law of our nature. 
Excellence of every sort is a prize, and a reward for virtuous, 
patient, and well-directed exertion, and abstinence from what- 
ever may encumber, enfeeble, or delay us in our course. The 
approach to its lofty abode is rightly represented as steep and 
rugged. He who would reach it, must task his powers. But it 
is a noble task, for, besides the eminence it leads to, it nour- 
ishes a just ambition, subdues and casts off vicious propensi- 
ties, and strengthens the powers employed in its service, so as 
to render them continually capable of higher and higher attain- 
ments."* 

Again, Samuel Smiles tells us with true Scotch directness 
that "The crown and glory of life is character. It is the noblest 
possession of a man, constituting a rank in itself, and an 
estate in the general good-will ; dignifying every station, and 
exalting every position in society. It exercises a greater 
power than wealth, and secures all the honor without the jeal- 
ousies of fame. It carries with it an influence which always tells, 
— for it is the result of proud honor, rectitude, and consistency, 
*John Sargeant. 



296 CELIBACY. 

— qualities which, perhaps, more than any other, command the 
general confidence and respect of mankind." While Professor 
Huxley remarks in the same address from which I have already 
quoted, "The other point which I wish to impress upon you is, that 
.competitive examination, useful and excellent as it is for some 
purposes, is only a very partial test of what the winners will be 
worth in practical life. There are people who are neither very 
clever, nor very industrious, nor very strong, and who would 
probably be nowhere in an examination, and who yet exert a 
great influence in virtue of what is called force of character. 
They may not know much, but they take care that what they 
do know they know well. They may not be very quick, but the 
-knowledge they acquire sticks. They may not even be particu- 
larly industrious or enduring, but they are strong of will and 
firm of purpose, undaunted by fear of responsibility, single- 
minded and trust- wor thy . In practical life a man of this sort 
ds worth any number of merely clever and learned people. Of 
course I do not mean to imply for a moment that success in 
examination is incompatible with the possession of character 
such as I have just defined it, but failure in examination is no 
evidence of the want of such character. 

"And this leads me to administer from my point of view the 
'crumbs of comfort which on these occasions are ordinarily offered 
fo those whose names do not appear upon the prize list. It is 
quite true that practical life is a kind of long competitive exam- 
ination, conducted by that severe pedagogue Professor Circum- 
stance. But my experience leads me to conclude that his marks 
s are given much more for character than for cleverness. Hence, 
though 1 have no doubt that those boys who have received 
{prizes to-day have already given rise to a fair hope that the 
future may see them prominent, perhaps brilliantly distin- 
guished members of society, yet neither do I think it at all 
unlikely that among the undistinguished crowd there may lie 
the making of some simple soldier whose practical sense and 



CELIBACY. 297 

indomitable courage may save an army led by characterless 
cleverness to the brink of destruction, or some plain man of 
business who by dint of sheer honesty and firmness may slowly 
and surely rise to prosperity and honor, when his more bril- 
liant compeers, for lack of character, have gone down, with all 
who trusted them, to hopeless ruin. Such things do happen. 
Hence let none of you be discouraged. Those who have won 
prizes have made a good beginning ; those who have not may 
jet make that good ending which is better than a good begin- 
ning. No life is wasted unless it ends in sloth, dishonesty or 
cowardice. No success is worthy of the name unless it is won 
by honest industry and brave breasting of the waves of fortune 
Unless at the end of life some exaltation of the dawn still hangs 
about the palpable and the familiar ; unless there is some trans- 
formation of the real into some of the best dreams of youth, 
depend upon it, whatever outward success may have gathered 
round a man, he is but an elaborate and a mischievous failure." 
I do not wish to be misunderstood. I would say plainly that 
the discipline of celibacy, that discipline which rightly received 
•can mold into such high character and strong manhood, is two- 
fold. There is the discipline which comes from the deprivation 
of that incomparable companionship between husband and wife, 
which finds no counterpart in any other relation of life, the 
helpfulness of which can be understood only by those whose 
lives it has gladdened. This has already been mentioned, and 
constitutes one department of this double school of training. 
The other is the physical deprivation which comes from the 
denying of an instinct and appetite which physiologists have 
always set down as being the strongest natural impulse save 
only that of self-preservation — that is, the desire for life itself. 
To utterly deny so clamorous an instinct any expression what- 
ever is no mean task. The will, the resolution, the endurance 
required, the strength which shall be equal to any tumultuous 
rush of insurrection which may make sudden onslaught, is 



298 CELIBACY. 

known only to those who have fought the battle. We hear 
much of the value of self-control, of mastery over self. I would 
endorse all that has been said of its value and grandeur. I would 
make it stronger if any word of mine could possibly add to the 
golden words spoken in its praise by the wise and good of 
all ages and races. What I do wish to say is that I know of 
no better field on which to cultivate this quality of qualities 
than in the contest under consideration. Yet how silent have 
the world's leaders been on this point! I submit that the unity 
of opinion has been very remarkable which all investigators 
have expressed regarding the rank of physical desires. 
They all agree in putting the desire for life first, the 
reproductive desire second. If there have been any dissenter* 
from this opinion, I have not heard of them. Notice that this 
places it superior to that for food and drink, and the multitude 
of physical desires. This being granted on all hands, I would 
further call attention to the fact that the instinct of self-preserva- 
tion lies dormant to a great extent and most of the time. If you 
wish to indulge in refinements you may urge that in a certain 
sense we eat and drink, are careful to avoid exposure, etc., 
because of the life-instinct. But I have reference to the supreme 
test. It is not often that you and I are put to this test. It ia 
not often that we are placed in the position of the cashier who, 
with a revolver at his temple, is given the choice of the 
betrayal of his trust or the forfeiture of his life. It is not often 
that we are called to stand by the side of John Maynard and 
face the flames, or suffer a greater loss than that of life. Yery 
rarely are we asked to stand the supreme test on the life- 
instinct. So we turn to that twin instinct which presses close 
on the heels of the first in its intensity and power. Who shall 
say how often its supreme test may come to us ? Once in a 
life-time there may tremble in the balance life on one side and 
character on the other. Who shall undertake to fix for us the 
number of the times when this mighty appetite flings itself 



/ 



CELIBACY. 299 

upon the scales of our being, while character must fly to the 
opposite side and unfalteringly outweigh it ? Who shall say 
what surroundings shall make us safe from attack, what envi- 
ronment shall preclude assault ? I say this not to our shame 
but to our glory. " s As often,' says St. Antoine, 'as you 
resist, so often are you crowned.' Even the saints have been 
tormented by bad thoughts. To conquer a temptation against 
chastity, St. Benedict threw himself among thorns, St. Peter of 
Alcantara cast himself into a frozen pool. * * And 

why did God refuse to remove the temptation ? That, by 
resisting it, the saint might gain greater merit. ' For power is 
made perfect in infirmity.' " I copy this from a Roman Catho- 
lic book of "Instructions." I honor our friends of this faith 
for the noble utterances they have given us on this subject. 
We began by speaking of the intrinsic value of character, and 
the mastery over self, the self-control, which leads up to char- 
acter. It seems to me that it is fair to insist that the rank of 
the reproductive instinct, barely second to that of life itself, 
phis the frequency with which it is put to the supreme test as 
against character, beyond all comparison with that of the life 
instinct, gives it a prominence as a school of self-mastery which 
dwarfs into insignificance all the other necessary physical 
restraints put together. More than this, when He of Nazareth 
laid down the precept that the thought, the desire, the will to 
do, was equivalent to the deed, He did not utter an abstract 
spiritual truth alone, but the most enlightened materialistic 
philosophy of to-day as well. For this test and discipline oi 
which we are speaking is not physical alone, but mental as well. 
Dr. Acton, the best authority in medicine on these topics, well 
says, U I would exclude from the category of continent men 
those (and they are more numerous than may be generally sup- 
posed), who actually forbear from sexual intercourse, but put no 
restraint upon impure thoughts or the indulgence of sexual 
excitement, provided intercourse does not follow. This is only 



300 CELIBACY. 

physical continence ; it is incomplete without mental continence 
also. Such men as these, supposing the sexual excitement is 
followed by nocturnal emissions, as it often is, and this with 
great detriment to the nervous system, must not be ranked 
with the continents; to all intents and purposes they are 
Onanists." The emphasis placed upon the last word is so 
placed by Dr. Acton. Dr. J. G-. Holland, the late editor of 
The Century, and once a practicing physician, takes the same 
grourfd in writing of the " Yices of Imagination." He says: 
"There is an enchanted middle - ground between virtue and 
vice, where many a soul lives and feeds in secret, and takes its 
payment for the restraint and mortification of its outward life. 
I once knew an old dog whose most exalted and delighted life 
was lived upon this charmed territory. The only brute tenants 
of the dwelling where he lived were himself and a cat. Rover 
bore no ill-will toward his feline companion — in fact, he was 
too good-natured to bear ill-will toward anything. He had 
been detected once or twice in worrying her, and one or two 
severe floggings had taught him that the sport would not be 
tolerated. Still he did not stop thinking about it ; and at every 
convenient opportunity he planted himself in her way, watched 
her as she lurked for prey, scared her by growls and feints, 
and kept her in a fever of apprehension and fretfulness. Now, 
while I do not believe that he intended her the slightest mis- 
chief, I have no doubt that, in his bloody imagination, he had 
slain her a thousand times, chased her all over the neighbor- 
hood, aud torn her limb from limb . In short, while he knew 
that he must not worry her, he took the satisfaction that lay 
next to it — that of being tempted to worry her, and found in 
the excitement of this temptation the highest rewards of his 
self-denial. 

"Humanity has plenty of Rovers of this same sort — men 
and women who lead faultless outward lives, who have no inten- 
tion to sin, who yield their judgment — if not their conscience — 



CELIBACY. 301 

to the motives of self-restraint, but who, in secret, resort to the 
fields of temptation, and seek among its excitements for the 
flavor, at least, of the sins which they have discarded. This 
realm of temptation is, to a multitude of minds, one of the 
most seductive in which their feet ever wander. Thither they 
resort to meet and commune with the images, beautiful but 
impure, of the forbidden things that lie beyond. In fact, I 
have sometimes thought there were men and women who were 
really more in love with temptation than with sin — who, by 
genuine experience had learned that feasts of the imagination 
were sweeter than feasts of sense. Whether this be the case 
or not, I have no doubt that the love of temptation, for the 
excitement which it brings, is very general, even with those 
whom we esteem as patterns of virtue. The surrender of the 
soul to these excitements is the more dangerous from the fact 
that, by some sort of sensual sophistry, they are conceived to 
be harmless, and without the pale of actual sin. There is no 
intention to sin in it, but only an attempt to filch from sin all 
the pleasure that can be procured without its penalty. 

"Playing with the temptation to sin is doubtless accompanied 
with less apparent disaster than the actual commission of it, 
and, so far, is a smaller evil ; but it is an evil, and, essentially, 
a sin. The man who loves and seeks the excitement of tempta- 
tion, shows that he is restrained from sin by fear, and not by 
principle — that, while his life is on the side of virtue, his affec- 
tions lean to vice. This is a sham life, and a mean life. There 
are multitudes to whom temptation comes from the forbidden 
world of sin, but it comes unbidden and unwelcome — on the 
lines of old appetites and old passions not yet thoroughly under 
control — and it is fought against and driven out. It is the vol- 
untary going out of the soul after temptation, as a kind of 
unforbidden good, that I challenge and question. It is the 
willing, secret sin of imagination that I denounce, as not only 
a sin essentially, in itself, but as the path over which every soul 



302 CELIBACY. 

naturally travels to the overt act of transgression which lies 
beyond. It is a kind of sin that injures none but the sinner, 
directly ; but fouler, more rotten-hearted men I have never met 
than the cowardly hypocrites whose lives are spent in dallying 
with the thought of sins which they dare not commit. 

fc< We often wonder that certain men and women are left by 
God to the commission of sins which shock us. We wonder 
how, under the temptation of a single hour, they fall from the 
very heights of virtue and of honor into sin and shame. The 
fact is that there are no such falls as these, or there are next to 
none. These men and women are those who have dallied with 
temptation— have exposed themselves to the influence of it, and 
have been weakened and corrupted by t it. If we could get at 
the secret histories of those who stand suddenly discovered as 
vicious, we should find that they had been through this most 
polluting preparatory process — that they had been in the habit 
jf going out and meeting temptation in order that they might 
enjoy its excitements — that underneath a blameless outward 
life they have welcomed and entertained sin in their imagina- 
tions, until their moral sense was blunted, and they were ready 
for the deed of which they thought they were incapable. 

"I very earnestly and gratefully believe in the exercise of a 
divinely restraining influence upon the minds of those who are 
tempted, but I believe there is a point beyond which it rarely 
goes. I do not believe that God will interpose to prevent a 
man from sinnning who either seeks, or willingly encounters, 
the temptation and the opportunity to sin. When a man finds 
charm in opportunity, and delight in temptation, he has already 
committed in heart the sin which he shrinks from embodying 
in action ; and God rarely stands between him and further 
guilt. We are to keep ourselves from opportunities, and God 
will keep us from sin. It is all that can be expected of a being 
of infinite purity that he shall guard us from the power of 
temptation that comes to us. He must be a hard and irrever- 

i 



CELIBACY. 303 

eut, or a very ignorant and deluded man, who can pray to be 
delivered from the overcoming power of a temptation into whose 
atmosphere he willingly enters. In fact, we are taught to pray, 
not that we may be delivered from the power of temptation, 
but that we may not be led into it. 

"It may be said with measurable truthfulness that half the 
art of Christian living consists in shunning temptation. A man 
who has lived to middle life has observed and studied himself 
to little purpose if he have not learned the weak points of his 
own character, and the "kind of temptations that assail him with 
the most power ; and it is doubtless true that any man who 
really loves a pure and good life will avoid a temptation as he 
would the sin to which it would lead him. I can have but little 
charity for those who apologize for their frequent falls from 
virtue by charging the blame upon the power of temptation, 
because temptation and opportunity come to them unsought no 
oftener than to others. It is the man who loves vice, and 
delights in temptation, who is subject to their power. I have 
no faith in the reformation of a drunkard who carelessly passes 
his accustomed tippling-shop, and carelessly looks in. 

" We are to avoid temptation because it is only as vice is 
glorified, and its charms exalted by the power of imagination, 
that it appears charming and attractive to us. A vision of 
naked vice, of whatsoever sort, is a vision of deformity. There 
are thousands among those who delight in the excitements of 
temptation, voluntarily sought, who would shrink with horror 
and disgust from a sudden introduction to the presence of a 
vice toward which they have been attracted from a distance. 
There is no beauty in beastliness, save that which an excited 
imagination lends to it. It is by no inherent charm that it 
draws men and women toward it. It is as low and loathsome as 
the serpent around whose evil eyes the poor bird flutters, until 
it drops, a victim to the fangs that await its certain coming. 

"I have said thus much generally of the sins of the imagina- 



304 CELIBACY. 

tion, aware that my remarks apply mainly to one variety of 
temptations — the most dangerous and the most seductive of all. 
There is nothing charming in the thought of murder, in the 
contemplation of a great revenge, in theft, and in the majority 
of crimes. Imagination has no sophistry by which such crimes 
may be justified, and no power to wrap them in an atmosphere 
of beauty. The sins of the imagination are mainly those which 
contemplate the illicit indulgence of natural and normal pas- 
sions and appetites, .the temptations to which come in upon the 
lines of legitimate and heaven-ordained sympathies. It is 
among the meshes of that which is legitimate and that which is 
illegitimate — that which is forbidden and that which is unfor- 
bidden — that the moral sense becomes involved and moral 
purity is compromised. It is because men and women are led 
out into the field of temptation by some of the sweetest and 
strongest sympathies of their natures that they feel no alarm 
and apprehend no danger. It is because they entertain no 
design to sin that they linger there without fear. Oh ! if this 
imaginary world of sin could be unveiled — this world into 
which the multitude go unknown and unsuspected — to dream of 
delights unhallowed by relations that may only give them license 
— how would it be red with the blush of shame ! 

" This world of sense, built by the imagination — how fair and 
foul it is ! Like a fairy island in the sea of life, it smiles in 
sunlight and sleeps in green, known of the world not by com- 
munion of knowledge, but by personal, secret discovery ! The 
waves of every ocean kiss its feet. The airs of every clime 
play among its trees, and tire with the voluptuous music which 
they bear. Flowers bend idly to the fall of fountains, and 
beautiful forms are wreathing their white arms, and calling for 
companionship. Out toward this charmed island, by day and 
by night, a million shallops push unseen of each other, and of 
the world of real life left behind, for revelry and reward ! The 
single sailors never meet each other ; they tread the same paths. 



CELIBACY. 305 

unknown of each other ; they come back, and no one knows, 
and no one asks where they have been. Again and again is the 
visit repeated, with no absolutely vicious intention, yet not 
without gathering the taint of vice. If God's light could shine 
upon this crowded sea, and discover the secrets of the island 
which it invests, what shameful retreats and encounters should 
we witness — fathers, mothers, maidens, men — children even, 
whom we had deemed as pure as snow — flying with guilty eyes 
and white lips to hide themselves from a great disgrace ! 

"There is vice enough in the world of actual life, and it i» 
there that we look for it ; but there is more in that other world 
of imagination that we do not see — vice that poisons, vice that 
kills, vice that makes whited sepulchers of temples that are 
deemed pure, even by multitudes of their tenants. Let none 
esteem themselves blameless or pure who willingly and gladly 
seek in this world of imagination for excitements ! That 
remarkable poem of Margaret Fuller, which ascribes an indeli- 
ble taint to the maiden who only dreams of her lover an 
unmaidenly dream, has a fearful but entirely legitimate signifi- 
cance. It is a forbidden realm, where pure feet never wander ; 
and all who would remain pure must forever avoid it. It is the 
haunt of devils and damned spirits. Its foul air poisons man- 
hood and shrivels womanhood, even if it never be left behind 
in an advance to the overt sin which lies beyond it. 

"The pitcher that goes often to the well gets broken at last. 
I presume that there is not one licentious man or ruined woman 
in one hundred whose way to perdition did not lie directly 
through this forbidden field of imagination. Into that field 
they went, and went again, till, weakened by the poisonous 
atmosphere, and grown morbid in their love of sin, and devel- 
oped in all their tendencies to sensuality, and familiarized with 
the thought of vice, they fell, with neither the disposition nor 
the power to rise again. It is in this field that Satan wins all 

(20) 



306 CELIBACY. 

his victories. It is here that he is transformed into an angel 
of light. It is on this debatable ground, half-way between vice 
and virtue, whither the silly multitude resort for dreams of that 
which they may not enjoy, that the question of personal perdi- 
tion is settled. A pure soul, sternly standing on the ground of 
virtue, or a pure soul standing immediately in the presence of 
vice, not once in ten thousand instances bends from its rectitude. 
It is only when it willingly becomes a wanderer among the wiles 
of temptation, and an entertainer of the images it finds there, 
that it becomes subject to the power that procures its ruin. 

"To the young, especially, is the exposition of this subject 
necessary — to those whose imaginations are active, whose pas- 
sions are fresh and strong, and whose inexperience leaves them 
ignorant of consequences. There is no field of danger less 
talked of than this. Through many years of attendance upon 
the public ministrations of Christianity, I have never but twice 
heard this subject pointedly and faithfully alluded to. Books 
are mainly silent upon it. Fathers and mothers, faithful in all 
things else, shrink from the administration of counsels upon 
matters which they would fain believe are all unknown to the 
precious ones they have nurtured. Thus it is in schools, and 
thus it is everywhere, where counsel is needed, and where it is 
demanded. An impure word, a doubtful jest, a tale of sin, 
drunk in by these fresh souls, excites the imagination, and 
straightway they discover the field of contemplation, so full of 
danger and of death, and learn all its paths before they know 
anything of the perils to which they subject themselves. Let 
me say to these, what they hear so little from other lips and 
pens, that whenever they find themselves attracted to it, they 
can never abide in it, or enter upon it, without taint and with- 
out sin. Sooner or later in their life will they find that from all 
willing dalliance with temptation, and unresisted entertainment 
of unworthy and impure imaginations, their character has suf- 
fered an injury which untold ages will fail to remedy."* 
*Gold-Foil. 



CELIBACY. 307 

The well-known Dr. Dio Lewis uses the following vigorous 
language in regard to this matter of mental self-abuse : 

"Where one person is injured by sexual commerce, many 
are made feverish and nervous by harboring lewd thoughts. 
Rioting in visions of nude women may exhaust one as much as 
an excess in actual intercourse. There are multitudes who 
would never spend a night with an abandoned female, but who 
rarely meet a young girl that their imaginations are not busy 
with her person. This species of indulgence is well-nigh uni- 
versal ; and as it is the source of all the other forms — the foun- 
tain from which the external vices spring, the nursery of mas- 
turbation and excessive coitus — I am surprised to find how little 
has been said about it. I have looked over many volumes upon 
sexual abuses, but do not recall a single earnest discussion of 
this point. Believing that this incontinence of the imagination 
works more mischief than all other forms of the evil — that, 
indeed, it gives rise to all the rest — I am astounded that it has 
received so little attention. #*•-.# 

'•All overt sins and crimes begin, we know, in the thoughts 
or imagination. A young man allows himself to conjure up 
visions of naked females. These become habitual and haunt 
him, until at last the sexual passion absorbs not only his wak- 
ing thoughts, but his very dreams. Now, if his education and 
surroundings make actual intercourse impracticable, he will 
probably fall into masturbation, or, if forewarned in regard to 
that destructive practice, he may restrain himself from all out 
ward indulgences while he still riots in lascivious fancies. 

"Ah, I wish I could say what ought to be said in this con- 
nection. Here is one of the great fountains of our woes. 
Although we may outwardly present a blameless life, how 
many of us could wear a window in our breasts without cover- 
ing our faces for shame? (A gentleman who sits near while I 
am writing says, ' I should prefer one with ground glass.') 

"So far as the record is preserved, unchastity has con- 



o08 CELIBACY. 

tributed above all other causes to the exhaustion and demoral- 
ization of the race . And we shall not be likely to vanquish 
this monster, even in ourselves, unless we make the thoughts 
our point of attack. So long as they are libidinous, we are 
indulging in sexual abuse, and are almost sure, when tempta- 
tion is presented, to commit the overt acts of sin. If we can- 
not succeed within, we may pray in vain for help to resist the 
tempter outwardly. But if we ask for assistance to cleanse the 
inner man, and supplement our prayers by hearty effort, we 
are sure to win. A sincere, earnest determination in this 
direction will never fail. 

u A gentleman of some intelligence had lived a continent life 
to the age of thirty-nine. A successful manufacturer, he had 
acquired wealth and kept up a hospitable home, but had never 
married. In point of personal purity, he was regarded as a 
very Joseph by his friends, among whom I had the honor to 
enjoy a place. What was my surprise when he consulted me 
with reference to seminal weakness ! I made careful inquiries 
about his habits. Had he practiced masturbation ? ' Never ! ' 
Had he indulged in familiarities with some woman ? ' Never ! ' 
And yet here was a case of frequent nocturnal emissions, with 
all the usual symptoms of exhaustion. 

" I said, ' There is but one explanation, and that is, that your 
imagination has been filled with pictures of nude women and 
sexual intercourse.' 

u He owned it: 'If this is important, I am free to confess 
that I am rarely alone a moment without being occupied with 
such visions. And my dreams, too, are full of them. ' 

"1 explained the mischief, and warned him that unless he 
could break up the habit altogether, he was a ruined man. 

"'But,' said he, 'I can't prevent my thoughts. I can't 
decide what shall come into my mind ! ' 

" * Yes, you can,' I answered ; 8 you can decide precisely what 



CELIBACY.' 300 

shall occupy your mind. It is just herein that a man is superior 
to a horse . ' 

" ' Oh,' he replied, ' I am sure that is impossible ; the thoughts 
will come unbidden.' 

" ' Now,' said I, ' you must try the following plan, and report 
to me . Fix it in your mind that a sensual idea is dangerous 
and harmful ; then the instant one comes it will startle you. 
By an effort you change the subject immediately. You can, it 
you are in earnest, set such an alarm in your mind, that if a 
lascivious thought occurs to you when asleep, it will waken you. 
(A number of persons have testified to this.) If when you are 
awake the enemy enters your mind, you will be aroused, and 
expel it at once without a very serious effort. If there is a 
moment's doubt, spring up and engage in some active exercise 
of the body. Each effort will be easier, until after a week or 
two you will have, in this particular, complete control of your 
thoughts ; and that will soon make you feel a good deal more 
like a man. 

" 'The fever and excitement of voluptuous re very wears out 
the nervous system, emasculates manhood, and shuts out all the 
noblest visions in this and the upper world. 

" 'Besides this, there must be an observance of health-laws. 
It is idle, over-fed people who suffer most from all animal 
excitements. Work hard, or by brisk walking and gymnastics 
give yourself two or three good sweats every day, and eat plain, 
nourishing, unstimulating food. Gro without supper. Ketire 
early, and rise early. Drink freely of cold water both on rising 
ind going to bed, aad sleep in pure air.' 

"After two months' faithful observance of this regimen, the 
patient sent me a note, which ran as follows : 

'My Dear Sir : — I cannot refrain from writing you of the result of your 
prescription. And that you may comprehend the happy change which has 
come over me, I will describe my condition when I sought your advice. I 
could not look upon a woman without my imagination being busy with her 
person, and when alone, I was constantly occupied with thoughts of women ; 



310 CELIBACY. 

and it was never with their moral qualities. Sometimes these thoughts would 
haunt me not only during my waking hours, but in my sleep. Three or four 
times a week, and sometimes every night in the week, these dreams would 
provoke nocturnal emissions. I must confess that during the month before 
I soughtyour advice I was in a constant fever. I loathed myself. About a 
week before I consulted you I went to New York, desperately resolved that I 
would seek with some abandoned women a complete relief from by burning 
lust. I went so far as to order such a companion through the clerk of the 
hotel where I stopped, and retired to my room to await her coming. Then 
my mother's angel face came to me, and the sweet, loving face of that other 
woman — that dear girl whose untimely death has been the one great sorrow 
of my life — her face came and looked into mine with an unearthly love, I 
hurried to the office made an excuse, hastened to another hotel, and came 
back to my home the next morning. All this now' seems like a horrid dream. 

'My dear friend, I do not know in what terms to express my gratitude that 
all this is past. I found it difficult to control my thoughts at first, but as you 
advised, I soon fixed the thought of danger in my mind, so that when a las- 
civious fancy appeared, it startled me, and immediately I took out of my 
pocket the card you suggested, on which I had written ten words, each sug- 
gestive of a subject in which I am interested. Looking over this card, I had 
no difficulty in changing the subject at once. This policy, with daily exer- 
cise and plain food, has given me a complete victory. I can now meet my 
lady friends and converse with them with real pleasure. My thoughts are not 
more lecherous and unclean than they would be in the presence of sisters. 

'The sense of manliness which I now feel in conversation with ladies, the 
real profit and social delight which their conversation affords me, these, added 
to cooler, better nerve, render the change a very happy one. I now believe 
what, you will remember, I began with doubting, namely, that the great sex- 
ual waste is in lecherous thought. . And I do not see how men are to become 
chaste unless they can learn to control their thinking. If their brains are hot 
with lust, if within they throb and burn as I did, I do not see how they are to 
keep themselves pure without. 

* You will ask me about the nocturnal emissions. I can report an improve- 
ment, but I did not expect to get rid of that difficulty at once. I have no 
doubt, from my present condition, that I shall soon recover from this weak- 
ness and become a man again. 

' With grateful respect, I am your friend, 

'G. W/ 

u An Italian gentleman, of very high station and character^ 
consulted me for a quite different affection ; but in order to put 
me in possession of all the facts in reference to his state of 



CELIBACY. 311 

health, he related his history. He had been inconvenienced 
five years before with frequent emissions, which totally unnerved 
him. He determined resolutely that the first instant the image 
of a woman, or any other libidinous idea, presented itself to 
his imagination, he would awake, and to ensure his doing so, 
dwelt in his thoughts on his resolution for a long time before 
going to sleep. The remedy, applied with a vigorous will, had 
the most happy results. The idea, the remembrance of its 
being a danger, and the determination to wake, closely united 
the evening before, were never dissociated even in sleep, and 
he awoke in time. This precaution, repeated, finally cured 
him. 

" Quite recently I have been made acquainted with another 
interesting case of self-cure. A young man of particularly 
bright faculties and good family asked my advice about sperma- 
torrhoea. His seminal losses had been so frequent that he 
would probably have become insane but for his exceptionally 
rich endowments. I urged him to attempt what may be called 
moral self- treatment. He had long thought that if by some 
means he could awake before the emission occurred, he should 
soon recover his health. He had slept with a towel tied about 
his loins with a big knot upon his spine, so that he could not 
turn on his back (the position in which he generally found him- 
self when awakened by an emission), and had tried several 
other expedients, but all without avail. 

"I charged him to fix in his mind the idea that a lascivious 
image was dangerous — to think of it some minutes before going 
to sleep, and resolve firmly that if such a fancy entered his 
brain he would start up instantly. He has had but two emis- 
sions within the past year ; and, what is scarcely less import- 
ant, has learned the art of controlling his thoughts, so that the 
libidinous imagination which was the source of all his troub- 
les is completely subordinated to his will."* 

*Chastity. 



312 CELIBACY. 

In the legitimate exercise of the function of reproduction, 
speedy and complete repose of the reproductive system follows 
the accomplishment of its work. But when, under cover of 
that impenetrable seclusion which shields the little inner world 
of each individual heart even from the one who may be sitting 
by his side, we invite or allow salacious longings and voluptuous 
pictures to possess the fancy and troup through the halls of 
imagination, there follows an engorgement of the sexual appa- 
ratus which results in permanent damage. For, unlike the rap- 
idly coming and as quickly retreating orgasm of the normal 
sexual exercise, this engorgement set up by a nerve-stimulus 
telegraphed from a diseased imagination, is continued into a 
more or less lasting congestion which ministers to the growth 
of an abnormal irritability and over-excitability of the repro- 
ductive organs ; and this inflammable local condition, reflected in 
its turn upon the central nervous system, is productive of seri- 
ous derangement of the general health. Drs. Yan Buren and 
Keyes speak strongly on this point: ''Excessive indulgence is 
bad at any time, but worst of all is stimulation without relief. 
This state is, unhappily, a common one among the unmarried 
men of large cities. Such individuals, looking at suggestive 
pictures, reading exciting books, taking part in impure conver- 
sation, become ripe subjects for nervous disease of an obscure 
sort, not only of the urethra but of the whole body." They 
even go so far as to affirm that, "In fact, this undue stimula- 
tion, without appropriate relief, is far more often the cause of 
hypochondria, melancholy, and functional perversion, than is 
the masturbation to which the public generally ascribe it. Nor 
can such an individual, by any plan of fornication, escape the 
evil consequences to which stimulated but ungratified desire 
exposes him . Marriage with a pure woman may right him — 
rarely anything short of this. Hence when such a case presents 
itself where marriage is impossible, or if the patient be already 
unhappily married, there is but one course left to advise, and 



CELIBACY. 313 

that is absolute continence and an effort at purity of thought, 
with strict avoidance of all possible temptations to erotic 
thought or act, whether entering through the mind, the eye, or 
the ear — whether actual or implied, direct or remote. Could 
such a patient imitate the heroic example of St. Augustine — a 
record of which that honest father of the Church has left behind 
— he could control the hygiene of his urethra, and doubtless 
save himself much distress in life."* 

Nor is this control, necessary to a wholesome single life, of 
the fancies as well as of the body, to be looked upon as something 
grievous, irksome and heavy to be borne. The bare fact of the 
existence of the law, "Thou shalt not kill," is proof sufficient 
that before the law, and behind the law, things are so constituted 
that the desire to kill is an abnormal and unnatural condition of 
mind. Into the healthy mind the desire to murder cannot find 
entrance. The same is true of stealing. It is equally true of 
-adultery. And when the law was laid down that "Every one 
that looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath committed 
adultery with her already in his heart, " it was a proclamation 
that, in the natural order of things, such impulses and desires 
were abnormal and diseased. So let no man say, when called 
to purity of mind, "I can't help such thoughts. They are 
natural to me. You ask the impossible." They are not 
natural. They are unnatural. The excitements in which you 
allow yourself to riot are abnormal. They speak the distem- 
pered imagination. And you can expel them For what is natural 
is seldom very hard, and never impossible. In the darkness of 
the Middle Ages, Martin Luther saw this truth, and the need of 
its inculcation, and lifted up his voice against what he called 
"unchaste chastity." And in the enlightened nineteenth cen- 
tury medicine warns us of the physical danger attendant upon 
a polluted mind. Thus does the most advanced medical science 
of to-day echo the teachings of the great Galilean. 

*Grenito-Urinary Diseases. 



314 CELIBACY. 

I am thus particular to note the mental and physical training 
which every single man, worthy the name, must undergo, because 
the real value of the man is summed up and included in his 
character, and I know no field for the exercise of the sturdy 
traits of character equal to this. Any man who has had the 
opportunity for knowing something of the number of those who 
fail of noble endurance under this training, will not think the 
position assumed a radical or unwarrantable one. I believe 
that it should be held up before the youth as one of the great- 
est conquerings of self. " Little monk, little monk," exclaimed 
the knight of Freimdsberg, touching Luther upon the shoulder 
as he was making his way into that historic council-chamber, 
" thou has work before thee which I and many a man whose 
trade is war never faced the like of." Like kindly admonition, 
appreciative of the realness of the conflict and the necessity 
for the heroic qualities, should be whispered in the ear of every 
growing boy. He can and will fight a good fight if he be given 
to understand that the cause is a noble one. But our silent 
position has ever passed the word down the line to him who 
was in the thickest of the fight, that he ought to be ashamed of 
himself for having this battle on his hands at all. What won 
der that such a message, coming in the hottest of the conflict 
from those who ought to have given him the warmest sympa- 
thy, has made the strong heart weak with discouragement, and 
the strong arm feeble with doubtings. Shall we not rather 
send cheer after cheer, huzza after huzza, on the wings of the 
wind, to the ears of this grand army of the Republic, as they 
close in the hand to hand struggle for all that is greatest and 
best in manhood, for all that is true and beautiful and good in 
character. 

It is an army of matchless beauty. In its'ranks we see every 
young man of the land in his dawning manhood, with many of 
maturer years who have seen veteran service. With eager 
fingers and full hearts we fashion for them a banner which shall 



CELIBACY. 315 

bear, in golden letters of inscription, liberty's own battle-cry, 
"The truth shall make you free." For this knighthood to 
which you are called demands of you a greater service than 
'asceticism. It requires that pure in heart and pure in body 
you shall not shun society — for it is only the coward slave of a 
libertine who is worthy the sentence of banishment — but min- 
gle in its pursuits, share its common joys and sorrows, and by 
your knightly bearing and character lift it upward toward its, 
noblest possibilities. 

" Dream not of helm and harness 
The sign of valor true ; 
Peace hath higher tests of manhood 
Than battle ever knew." 

It is to be noticed further, that the maintenance of the most loyal 
celibacy is perfectly consistent with the best health. I do not 
ignore the somewhat widespread impression to the contrary, 
nor forget that a health officer once wrote, "Marry or die," and 
that the statistics of the duration of life in the married and 
unmarried seemed in a measure to bear him out in this. Take, 
for instance, the experience of insane asylums. " The statistics, 
of all civilized countries show a larger proportion of lunatics 
among those who are unmarried than among those who are 
married. In France, according to Dagonet, there is one insane 
person to every 528 celibates over the age of fifteen, while 
among those who are married the proportion falls to one in 
1,523. 

"Of 1,426 patients admitted into the Colney Hatch Asylum, 
England, during four years, the proportion was about equal, 
but then, as the married persons in England and Wales, accord- 
ing to the census of 1871, are more than twice as numerous as 
the single persons, it follows that the porportion of lunatics 
existing among single persons is about double that among the 
married. 

"Most of the asylum reports of this country show like 



^ ^ CELIBACY. 

results. Taking one of the latest, that of the Illinois Eastern 
Hospital for the Insane at Kankakee, we find that of 424 
patients admitted during the years 1881-'83, 209 were single, 
152 married, 29 were widowed, 17 divorced or separated, and 
of 17 the civil condition was unknown." * 

All this is true. But we discover that the opinion that incon- 
tinence is incompatible with health, has been pushed to the 
front by those who would find excuse for their own excesses ; 
and that the statistics of longevity have been compiled, on the 
celibate side, from the ranks of those who were nominally 
single, and presumably of correct life. The fact that the nomi- 
nally single who really lead more or less dissolute lives, are 
especially open to influences tending to upset the reason, or 
to shorten life, at once takes the weight of conclusion from 
these figures for all those who have ever gotten a glimpse of 
the extent to which wickedness, associate and solitary, runs 
riot even in the most unsuspected quarters. 

The truth is, the honest celibate will find in his celibacy no 
obstacle to the attainment of his highest mental and physical 
capabilities. Dr. Dio Lewis cannot restrain himself from the 
extended use of italics when he touches this point: "All emi- 
nent physiologists who have written on this point agree that the 
most precious atoms of the blood enter into the composition of 
the semen. A healthy man may occasionally discharge his seed 
with impunity, but if he chooses — with reference to great 'physi- 
cal strength and endurance, as in the pedestrian, boat-racer, 
prize-fighter or explorer \ or with reference to great intellectual 
and moral work, as in the apostle Paul, Sir Isaac Newton and 
a thousand other instances — to refrain entirely from sexual 
pleasure, nature well knows what to do with those precious atoms. 
She finds use for them all in building up a keener brain and 
more vital and enduring nerves and muscles." 

The celebrated Hufeland speaks strongly in refutation of the 

* Treatise on Insanity. Wm. A. Hammond, M D. 



CELIBACY. 317 

popular error. " There was a time," he says, u when the Ger- 
man youth never thought of intimacy with the other sex till 
their twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth year ; and yet nothing was 
then known of the pernicious consequences of this chastity, nor 
of any other imaginary evils of which people now dream ; but 
these youths, increasing in strength as well as growth, became, 
men, who by their size, excited the astonishment even of the. 
Eomans. 

u People now leave off at the period when these began. 
They imagine they can never soon enough throw off their chas- 
tity ; and young persons, long before their bodies are completely 
finished, begin to waste those powers which are destined for a 
higher use. The consequences are evident. These men become 
incomplete, half-formed beings; and at the period when our 
ancestors began to employ those powers, they, in them, are 
generally exhausted ; they feel nothing but dejection and mis- 
ery in their weakness ; and a stimulus of the utmost importance 
for seasoning life is to them forever lost. 

"It is incredible how far prejudice in this respect may be 
carried, especially when it flatters our inclination. I once, 
knew a man who seriously believed that there was no poison, 
more prejudicial to the human body than continence, and the 
consequence was that he was an old man in his twentieth year, 
and in his twenty-fifth died of old age. 

" The present age has fallen so much into the taste of the. 
times of chivalry, that all romances must now assume that form in 
order to please ; and one, indeed, cannot help admiring the great, 
noble, and resolute manner of thinking and acting of these old 
Germans . It appears that the more sensible we are how far 
we have degenerated from them, the more we are excited by 
their example, and the more we are inflamed with a desire to 
imitate their conduct. But what a happiness would it be if we 
'did not think merely of the object, but of the means to obtain 
it. That by which these people acquired so much courage, so 



318 CELIBACY. 

great powers both of body and mind, their bold, firm, and reso- 
lute character, which made them real men in the utmost sense 
of the word, was, in particular, their strict continence. The 
youth of these men was destined to great exploits and under- 
takings, not to voluptuousness and dissipation ; the physical 
propensity to love did not among them sink into mere animal 
enjoyment, but was exalted to a moral incitement to noble and 
heroic actions. Each bore in his heart the image of his beloved 
object, whether real or imaginary ; and this romantic love, this 
indissoluble attachment, was the shield of his continence and 
virtue, strengthened the powers of his body, and communicated 
to his mind courage and unalterable resolution, by continually 
directing his attention to his fair one smiling to him at a dis- 
tance, and whose favor could be gained only by glorious achieve- 
ments. However romantic these notions may be, I find, on 
^loser examination, great wisdom in this use of physical love, 
jne of the strongest motives by which human nature is actuated. 
How widely different has the case become among us ! This 
propensity which by prudent management may be made the 
germ of the most exalted virtue, of the greatest heroism, has 
degenerated into whining sensibility, or mere sensual gratifica- 
tion, which people enjoy prematurely, and even to satiety; the 
passion of love, which in those periods was a security against dis- 
sipation, is at present the source of the greatest ; the virtue of 
chastity, the principal foundation, without doubt, of moral firm- 
ness and manliness of character, has become a subject of ridi- 
cule, and is decried as old-fashioned pedantry ; and what ought 
to be the last and sweetest reward of toil, labor, and danger, 
has become a flower which every strippling crops by the way. 
Why does Nature excite in our bosom this sighing after union, 
this all-powerful, irresistible propensity to love ? Not, truly, 
to afford subjects for romance or to make a figure in the ecstatic 
raptures of poetry ; but that it may serve as an indissoluble 
band to unite two hearts, to lay the grounds for a happy gen- 



CELIBACY. 319 

eration ; and that, by this magic tie, our existence may be con- 
nected with the first and the most sacred of all duties. How 
fortunate would it be were we here to imitate the ancient 
method, and never to pull the fruit till we had planted ! 

"At present, we hear a great deal of strength and strong 
men : but I will believe nothing of it as long as I see that they 
have not strength enough to subdue their passions ; for, that is 
the only cause of triumph, as well as the only sign of mental 
strength ; and chastity is the school in which youth ought to be 
exercised, and to form themselves for becoming strong men. 

"We in general find, in the old world, that all those from 
whom anything great or glorious was expected, were obliged to 
restrain physical love. So much were people then convinced 
that Yenus absorbs the whole powers of man, that those given 
up to dissipation could never attain an exalted position."* 

In short, the highest medical authorities agree that there is no 
reason why the most perfect health, and the most absolute con- 
tinence, should not go hand in hand. And any seeker after 
the right way who may have been troubled by assertions to the 
contrary, may rest assured that such opinions are mistaken. 

Again, attention is called to the aids which may be had in a 
struggle which is by no means an easy one. From the physical 
side we have that of physical exercise. I need not enlarge* 
upon this, sufficient has been said in the preceding chapter. I 
would remind you of the opinion expressed so cautiously in the 
letter from one of Yale's oarsmen. Dr. Acton in his work 
quotes an English athlete who bears the same testimony : 
"A striking example of what resolution can do was related 
to me lately by a distinguished patient . ' You may be some- 
what surprised, Mr. Acton,' said he, fc by the statement I am 
about to make to you, that before my marriage I lived a perfectly 
continent life. During my university career my passions were 
very strong, sometimes almost uncontrollable, but I have the 

*The Art of Prolonging Life. 



320 CELIBACY. 

satisfaction of thinking that I mastered them ; it was, how 
ever by great efforts. I obliged myself to take violent physical 
exertion ; I was the best oar of my year, and when I felt par" 
ticularly strong sexual desire, I sallied out to take my exercise. 
I was victorious always ; and I never committed fornication ; \ 
you see in what robust health I am, it was exercise that alone 
saved me. ' I may mention that this gentleman took a most 
excellent degree, and has reached the highest point of his pro- 
fession . Here then is an instance of what energy of character, 
indomitable perseverance and good health will effect." 

There can be no doubt that active muscular exertion is a most 
efficient aid, combined with that physical balance of which we 
have already spoken, and which includes the bath, sleep, and 
regularity of the evacuations. 

From the mental side the first aid which we notice is likewise 
exercise — mental exercise. By this is meant a close mental pur- 
suit, which shall be close enough to be absorbing. But I do 
not mean to endorse any u midnight oil " perversion. A friend 
once said to me that u God's light is better than man's light." 
There is time enough each day during the hours of daylight, 
for you to take all the mental exercise and do all the work 
which ought to be put into one cycle of twenty-four hours. 
And you will find that excessive mental work is your enemy 
rather than your friend. For that means an abnormal demand 
upon the nervous system, which induces more or less irritation 
of the nervous centers, which is in turn reflected back upon the 
reproductive system and manifests itself in undue excitement. 
For the relation between the two is most intimate, and you may 
thus bring about the very state of affairs which you designed to 
avoid. The true idea is not that of over-work, but employ- 
ment. You cannot banish unwelcome thoughts from your 
mind by resolving that they shall not come, and calling your- 
self hard names when they do come, any more than you can 
learn to love the right by resolving that you will because yon 



CELIBACY. 321 

ought. The only way to learn to love the right is to put it 
in daily and constant practice wherever it finds a point of con- 
tact with your daily duties. And the only way to keep unclean 
thoughts out of your mind, is to have it too busy upon your 
pursuit, whatever that may be, to find time for anything else. 
Dr. Carpenter remarks in his physiology, "The author would 
say to those of his younger readers who urge the wants of 
nature as an excuse for the illicit gratification of the sexual pas- 
sion, 'Try the effects of close mental application to some of 
those ennobling pursuits to which your profession introduces 
you, in combination with vigorous bodily exercise, before you 
assert that the appetite is unrestrainable, and act upon that 
assertion.' Nothing tends so much to increase the desire, as 
the continual direction of the mind towards the objects of its 
gratification, especially under the favoring influence of seden- 
tary habits; whilst nothing so effectually represses it as the 
determinate exercise of the mental faculties upon other subjects 
and the expenditure of nervous energy in other channels. " 

Any young man may mark out for himself pursuits worthy or 
his best effort of head and of hand. If he think himself so placed 
that his daily task must be a very humble one, let him remem- 
ber that it is the man who gives rank to the labor, whatever it 
maybe — that " He who thinks his place below him, will cer- 
tainly be below his place " — and, magnifying his office, throw 
into it his very best effort, assured that those who receive the 
promotions are those whose simple faithfulness lays hold of the 
nobility in little things. 

" A servant with this clause 
Makes drudgery divine , 
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws 
Makes that and the action fine." 

Socrates often quoted the saying of Hesiod, that no work was 
a disgrace, but not doing any work was a disgrace. Let any 
young man who thinks that his particular work offers no place 

(21) 



322 CELIBACY. 

for mental activity, set his wits to work ; for no occupation has 
jet been found which does not yield a rich return for all the brain 
which is put into it. If, on the other hand, it does not afford 
sufficient exercise for the muscles, the ways in which this lack 
may be met have already been pointed out. And there is no 
question but that employment, mental and physical, which shall 
absorb the energies, is the sine \qua, non of the loyally celibate 
life. To live singly, and at the §ame time nobly, one must have 
a preoccupied mind and body. 

A somewhat ingenious plan for ridding the mind of unworthy 
imaginings, is the invention of Dr. Dio Lewis. " While striv- 
ing to help young men into the habit of clean thinking, I have 
tried many expedients. With intelligent persons, what I call 
the * card plan ' has often proved useful. That is, to write on a 
card a number of words, each suggesting a subject of interest 
or a familiar train of thought. When an impure notion obtrudes 
itself, the idea of danger which has been associated with it will 
arrest the attention, the card is taken out, and a glance at it 
will help to shift the switch at once. One who came to me for 
advice about two years ago, sent in his ' card ' the other day 
at my request, together with the following : 

" 'My Dear Friend. — The words on this card have helped me out of the 
habit of impure thought. I am sure they will seem queer to you, but here 
they are : 

'Hurry — Nonsense — Darling — Ripsticks.' 

'I take genuine pleasure in telling you something of the trains of thought 
which these words suggest to me. I was in the battle of the 'Wilderness.' In a 
slight skirmish which occurred on the evening previous to the opening of that 
awful conflict, I was standing behind a large tree reloading, when my compan- 
ion, who was doing the same thing behind another tree ten feet from me, 
cried out to me, 'John, they've got a bead on you; a bullet just struck 
right over your head in the tree. Come, hurry up, and run to that big maple. 
Hurry 1 Hurry ! ' I ran to the other tree, but was not two feet from the first 
one, when a minie-ball struck exactly where I had stood. If I had been the 
tenth part of a second later, I should have been a dead man. The word 
'hurry' on my card brings that scene before me again. 



CELIBACY. 323 

"Afterward I was sick of typhoid fever in a hospital in Washington. I suf- 
fered more than I thought it was possible to suffer. One night I gave up, 
but determined, with what remained to me of strength and consciousness, to 
dictate a letter to my mother, and one to the dear girl who was more precious 
to me than all the world beside. I had scarcely finished the one to Mary when 
the darkness came. The last words I remember to have repeated were : 'Fare- 
well, my precious one ! May you and my dear mother try to comfort each 
other.' Twelve days after, when I began to stagger back into the light again, 
the first thing that I can distinctly remember is, saying, ' Farewell, Mary ! ' 
when the voice of our brave, warm-hearted surgeon cried out, ' Nonsense, 
man, nonsense ! Nonsense !' Somehow he pronounced that word in a way 
which gave me new hope. When I began to get stronger, I thought I would 
not write home, but would, if possible, get a furlough, and give them a sur- 
prise. My second word, ' nonsense/ brings all this, and much more, back to 
me in a flood. 

' In five weeks I was able to travel, and the furlough was easily obtained- 
I came home to find that my widowed mother had been taken down at once 
upon receiving my letter, and that my Mary had come to nurse her. Mother 
died two weeks before I reached home, and I found Mary in a deep decline. 
:Five days after my return, she joined mother in the better land. Just before 
she breathed her last, she whispered to me, ' Oh, my darling ! if I could have 
known that you were living, I should not have fallen sick.' I need hardly 
say that my third word, ' darling/ suggests a train of most painfully-interest- 
ing thoughts. 

' My fourth word, 'Ripsticks/ was the name by which an old man, with 
*whom I used to go fishing and hunting when I was a boy, always called me. 
The word brings back many adventures of my early boyhood, and rarely fails 
to set me thinking. 

' Whenever an impure thought entered my mind, I remembered my card at 
once, and taking it out, never failed to change the subject. It was not a 
complete victory at once, but now I have no need of the card at all. I have 
cleaned my soul of nasty thoughts, and can talk with any of my lady friends 
for an hour without a single sexual impulse. I cannot tell you how clean 
and manly I feel. I would not go back again for a mine of gold. This 
'card trick/ as I call it, is worth infinitely more than any of those with which 
they win money. I believe that this expedient might help the worst victim 
of sexual filth into purity and manliness, if he would only try it with a good, 
strong will/ 

" Every person's memory abounds with thrilling incidents 
^which may be recalled by suggestive words. I have before me 



324 CELIBACY. 

at this moment a card which an intelligent young clergyman 
used with satisfactory results. It contains 

Amanda — Never — Mother — Minute — Mercy. 

"All but one of these words were explained to me In 
regard to the second, he said, in a tremulous voice, that no one 
but himself and God would ever know of the scene which that 
word recalled, unless the friend who participated in the tragic 
event remembered it in another world. 

' ' Another card bears six words : 

Quick — My God — Push — Father— Mary — Precisely. 

"I asked the bright young fellow who had used this card to 
give me the facts or incidents which his six words recalled. He 
declined, because of two great wrongs in his life which the sec- 
ond and fifth referred to. 

"I have asked to see these cards a great many times, and 
have been struck with the frequency of such words as Mother,. 
Sister, Mary, Katie . Women fill the larger part in the deepest 
experiences of civilized men. 

"Does it not seem curious that when a young man would rid 
himself of libidinous fancies, he should select from his own 
experiences some event in which a woman was his companion I 
And yet it is not strange. Thoughts of mother or sister, lift 
him heavenward more than thoughts of father or brother, just 
as social contact with mother and sister helps him into pure 
thoughts more than social contact with father and brother. 
But, strangely enough, all those who have deeply loved, and 
lost by death the object of their affections, instinctively recall 
the lost one in their attempts to shake off the tyranny of lust. 
And I have been struck, in listening to their recitals, with the 
reverent, almost prayerful, spirit in which they allude to those 
loved ones in the other world. 

"How sweet and comforting the thought, that while among. 



CELIBACT. 325 

the lowest men, and in the lowest moments of g )od men, it is 
the sex of body which attracts, in the higher moments it is the 
sex of soul ! This is not only the high and holy, but the per- 
manent, passion. It survives death and time. I know a noble 
old man of nearly eighty, who has remained alone, living for 
sixty years on the memory of his Mary. For one short month 
she was his earthly wife ; for more than half a century she has 
been his heavenly wife."* 

There are two other aids to a celibate life which shall be self- 
respecting and worthy of admiration, yet to be noticed. The 
first is a minor one. Among mental conditions, nothing more 
quickly quiets the unruly excitement, than disgust. The antago- 
nism between this emotion and the reproductive impulse has 
long been recognized. A fellow student in a New York medi- 
cal school told the writer that he quieted such excitements, 
which had given him much trouble, by picturing to himself the 
dissecting room. " All the help that one excellent clergyman 
can give to tempted brethren is this : s Another man is tor- 
mented by evil thoughts at night. Let him be directed to cross 
his arms upon his breast, and extend himself as if he were 
lying in his coffin. Let him endeavor to think of himself as he 
will be one day stretched in death. If such solemn thoughts 
do not drive away evil imaginings, let him rise from his bed 
and lie on the floor. ' ' ' All this seems rather a weak and piti- 
ful performance for one who has set out to conquer himself. 
And mention is made of this well-known antagonism as a mat- 
ter of completeness merely, that nothing may be omitted. I 
am sure that we may find a more excellent, a more aggressive 
way, than this makeshift of disgust. Still, * 4 trifling precautions 
will often prevent great mischiefs. ' ' 

The one aid still remaining for consideration, is 
that of confession. The Roman Catholic work already 
•quoted asserts, "It is very useful to disclose unchaste 

♦Chastity. 



326 CELIBACY. 

temptations to your confessor. St. Philip Neri says that a 
temptation disclosed is half conquered . And should a person 
have the misfortune to fall into a sin against purity, let him go 
to confession immediately. By ordering him, whenever he fell 
into sin to confess it immediately, St. Philip Neri freed a young 
man from this sin." While you and I may not approve the 
priestly confessional, some of us may be so fortunate as to have 
some friend to whom we can go for aid and counsel in this mat- 
ter. There is real helpfulness in talking these things over with 
a wise, sympathetic friend, who will meet us in the proper spirit. 
For the whole matter has gained a sort of fictitious interest and 
importance, a false coloring, from the mysterious silence main- 
tained by good people, which excites the curiosity of youth r 
and leads them to regard the subject as altogether removed 
from nature's ordinary workings, to the realm of mystery and 
imagination. To such, a plain matter-of-fact talk with an elder, 
who is yet in sympathy with the young, is of the greatest bene- 
fit. Yet we are so inclined to draw within our shells, and live 
apart from those immediately around us, letting them catch no 
hint of our kindly interest, that I fear me the number of young 
men who feel that they know of no such friend to whom they 
can go, exceeds the number of those who are sure of sympa- 
thetic counsel. But priest or friend is not the only, or the most 
important, embodiment of the aid of confession. There is one 
Ear which is always ready to hear us, one Father above who 
always understands us perfectly. To the believer let me whis- 
per that He made us, and that our confession to Him is to one 
who knows, precisely, what the conflict is ; and that this con- 
fession to Him of our weakness and sin is one of the best of 
defensive armors. To those who do not believe, I commend 
the utterance of their own leader, O. B. Frothingham : "I 
said a moment ago, let scientific investigation go on, by all 
means. Not only can it do no harm, but I am sure that the 
further it goes the more clearly will scientific men recognize a 



CELIBACY. 327 

power not yet defined, but distinctly felt by some of the ablest 
of them. This question has presented itself to me many times 
in the last few years : What is the power behind these igno- 
rant men who find dignity and comfort in religion ? * * 
What is this power \ I cannot undertake to say ; but it is there, 
and it may be that those persons who deny the essential truths 
of revealed religion are all wrong. At any rate, I, for one, do 
not care to go on denying the existence ot such a force." 
Then I ask them to listen to the assertion of Washington in his 
Farewell Address — "For three-quarters of men there is no 
morality without religion." Then I ask them to pour their 
confessions into the unseen Ear, as a matter of scientific inves- 
tigation, of psychological experiment, if they must; and mak- 
ing the test in that faithful and scientific spirit which refuses to 
be warped by preconceived opinion, the result will surprise 
them. 

The plan of organization under which the English universities 
have their existence, has afforded, by its creation of "fellows," 
an experiment in nobly-purposed celibacy which is possessed of 
great interest . The Roman Catholic priesthood is a body so 
far apart from the world of real life, its members move in an 
environment, and must fit themselves to a life-contact, so differ- 
ent from that of the mass of humanity, that their celibate vow 
is without practical value to us as an experiment in celibacy. 
Besides, it would be impossible to arrive at any conclusion as 
to the loyalty or merit of lives which are so lived as to be 
secure from observation. So that in the English schools we 
find what is really the only systematic experiment in celibacy . 
Nor is the interest we should feel in this experiment dependent 
merely upon the absence of like experiments in other quarters. 
The quality of the men engaged in it, and the intellectual 
rather than muscular nature of their pursuits, combine to make 
the test almost an ideal one. The treatise of Dr. Acton con- 
tains an opinion on the subject from a married resident at Cam- 



328 CELIBACY. 

bridge^ who was formerly a celibate fellow of a large college. 
It is so full of interest that I insert it here. 

"As regards the celibate life of college fellows, many most 
practical reasons exist in support of that rule. A brief state- 
ment must first be made concerning the object of college fellow- 
ships. Their object is not, as many imagine, to make a monas- 
tic society ; still less to perpetuate an order of clergy who take 
a life-long vow of 'obedience, chastity, and poverty.' The 
main design of college fellowships is to assist young men who 
have talents but no money. In electing one of its members a 
fellow, the college has the aim in view of assisting a man of 
proved ability to fit himself without interruption for active ser- 
vice of Church or State. Just as a parent would make his 
son an allowance in order to help him in starting his chosen 
career, so does the college give a fellowship, to make its best 
men independent, while they are engaged in work or study 
leading to an honorable course of life, whatever that course 
may be. And let it be specially noted that only to men of lim- 
ited means does the college give this advantage ; no one can be 
elected a fellow if he has already a certain income exceeding 
iive hundred a year ; no one can continue a fellow if he after- 
ward become possessed of such a certain income ; in that case 
he vacates his fellowship ipso facto without exception. Again, 
by the general rule on the subject, no one can hold a fellowship 
for more than a limited number of years — ten is about the 
average. By the end of such a time as that it is farely assumed 
that a man will be ready to make his own good way in the 
world, without requiring his college to help him. The fellow- 
ship was not given the man to make him 'idle and affluent,' 
but simply in order to secure him the proper leisure for ' work- 
ing;' to save him the time he would otherwise spend in earn- 
ing his own bread. As to 'affluence,' the average fellowship 
never exceeds three hundred a year. In days like these it is but 
a bare provision, even for a man who has only himself to keep. 






CELIBACY. 329 

"The above statement will help to explain what practical 
reason the college has for strongly dissuading its fellows from 
marriage. Would any parent advise his son otherwise ? If only 
able to make him an allowance for some ten years, or a little 
more, would not the parent warn his son on no account to marry 
until he had secured his position ? Would not he urge him to 
throw his energies, without distraction and without incumbrance, 
into an earnest preparation for the actual work of life, and to 
wait, at least, till he is turned of thirty before he thinks of 
incurring new responsibilities? A young man with private 
property can please himself in the matter of marrying early : 
but a young man dependent on others, be those others his par- 
ents or be they his college, is not free to please himself, but is 
bound in moral duty to secure his own independence first before 
he thinks of marriage. 

"So far I have spoken of all fellows of colleges, whether 
they ' reside ' or not ; by ' residing ' I mean ' living at the uni- 
versity.' Every fellow has the option of doing this if he 
pleases. Some of the liberal professions, e. g.> divinity or 
physic, can be studied quite or nearly as well at the university 
as anywhere else ; but, in point of fact, few fellows reside unless 
they have been appointed to hold collegiate office. And this 
brings us to another reason in favor of college celibacy. One 
of the objects of fellowships is this : to secure a class of supe- 
rior men who will give their whole time and interest to the care 
of the college estates, to the management of the college itself, 
to the education of the under-graduates, and generally to the 
fulfilment of all academic duties. Of course a single man is able 
to do all this without interruption and with undivided energies ; 
whereas a married fellow would be bound to bestow a part of 
his time on his family, would find his domestic interests often 
conflicting with his collegiate and academical, would be unable 
to live within the college walls, which are quite unequal to such 
an accommodation ; in fact, a married fellow would not be a 



330 CELIBACY. 

person of the class which the founders of fellowships wished to 
keep established. That colleges would ever be managed with- 
out such a class of celibates is very doubtful indeed, and some 
of us would call it impossible. 

U A third reason in favor of celibacy is that it somewhat 
increases the chance of fellowships falling vacant. Of course 
there are many fellows who marry within ten years of being 
elected ; and . if the celibate rule be maintained, fellowships 
then fall vacant with so much the greater frequency. This is 
the more desirable, because there are certain exceptional cases 
in which the fellowship can be retained beyond the limit of ten 
years. If a man be holding university office, or college office, 
or be in orders, he still retains his fellowship although he has 
passed the limit. The reason is very simple ; university office 
or college office, in point of money, is a mere pittance— no one 
could hold it without additional income ; and the value of the 
man's college services is fairly considered as a claim on his 
part to share, as before, in the college revenues, so long as he 
is actually serving: a non-resident has no such claim. As 
regards the profession of orders, it is so notoriously poor in 
point of money, that the college is justified in treating fellows 
in orders on different terms to fellows in other professions. 
Fellows in orders vacate their fellowships as soon as they suc- 
ceed to a benefice (from college or any other patronage) 
exceeding in value a clear three hundred per annum. 

"To sum up what I have said in brief: a fellow of a college 
is forbidden to marry (1) for the sake of his own interests, his 
own success in his after career; (2) for the sake of the 
college interests, its good and effective superintendence ; 
(3) for the sake of prospective vacancies by which the helping 
hand may be stretched to younger men of equal merit. 

"And let it be noted most especially that the college does not 
contemplate a fellow retaining his fellowship above ten years. 
The 'forbidding to marry' applies, in fact, to men between two- 



CELIBACY. 331 

and-twenty and two-and-thirty. Does any phase of modern 
society allow young men of this age, dependent on others, to 
marry ? Surely the rule of the colleges is simply the rule of 
the world. I am speaking only of the upper classes, of course ; 
but the college emphatically puts its fellows in the forefront of 
the upper classes, and by the marriage rule of that class they 
would clearly be bound to abide, even if the college itself did 
not, as it does, enforce the rule upon them. 

"However, the last University -Commission greatly relaxed 
our rule of celibacj^. Under the statute of 1858 all fellows of 
colleges who hold university office can marry now without 
vacating their fellowships. The number of university offices is 
somewhere between thirty and forty ; all of them (except the 
divinity professorships) are open to laymen as well as to clergy- 
men. Here is one avenue (not, it must be owned, an easy 
one) for the college fellow whose aims are matrimonial. But 
that is only the slightest part of the change ; out of our fifteen 
colleges there are now no less than eight whose statutes allow 
of the fellows marrying ; allows them with some restrictions, it 
is true, but with no conditions which fair perseverance and fair 
ability cannot achieve. These eight colleges contain in all about 
135 fellows. The total number of fellowships at Cambridge is 
nearly 290. 

u It is, therefore, tolerably plain, as far as Cambridge is 
concerned, that the old rule of celibacy has become a thing of 
the past, or at least it is so far tempered by modern changes 
and chances that no one now could esteem it ' a yoke too griev- 
ous to bear.' At Cambridge, no doubt, as elsewhere, 'persons 
intending to marry ' must wait till time, position, and income 
all concur to endorse their intention. But looking on college 
office and college work as a profession, it cannot be denied that 
now it offers the same facilities for marriage as any other. 

"Though I am one of the many who profit in some degree 
by these and the like alterations, I still retain my conviction 



832 CELIBACY. 

that the old arrangement was best. Of this, at least, I am 
certain, that for college government a certain number of celi- 
bate fellows are indispensible. If all the college officers were 
married and living out of college, discipline among the under- 
graduates could not be at all maintained, and personal influence, 
close association, would all but cease to exist. Each college is 
at present a religious house, with the very highest standard ot 
morality, and quite unrivaled facilities of education. And the 
real management of every college depends on the body of celi- 
bates who live within the walls and devote themselves to the 
work. Every change which, in any degree, diminishes the 
number of such collegiate authorities cannot but be more or 
less injurious to all our university system. 

U I do not for a moment deny that celibate life involves a 
great self-sacrifice ; but so does every human career which has 
high and noble aims. Surely the universities, like every other 
sphere in the country, will never fall short of men enough to 
fill up their posts of duty — posts which none but a celibate is 
really qualified to fill. There are always men in England (and 
an ample supply of such men) who have strength enough to 
forego the indulgence ot physical and sentimental passion, when 
they know that by such self-denial only can th eir work be prop- 
erly carried out. Nor do such men regard themselves, nor can 
we regard them as martyrs . College celibacy, at least, is any- 
thing but a martyrdom ; to some well balanced constitutions it 
is not a sacrifice at all, but purely a matter of preference. These 
are the men who persevere in retaining their fellowships twenty 
or thirty years, doing an immensity of good to their college and 
university, and growing ripe in years and labors till higher pre- 
ferment calls them away. It is to this celibate body of fellows 
that Oxford and Cambridge owe their immense success, their 
influence which century by century has grown yet wider and 
wider, till now there is not an educated class in the whole of 
England which does not feel their effect ; but unless succeeding 



CELIBACY. 333 

generations produce at least the present supply of men who. 
have courage and self-denial to maintain the celibate rule, 
Oxford and Cambridge will cease to be what they are. 

"Assuming, then, as a matter of fact, the advantages of col- 
legiate celibacy, we have to consider its obvious drawbacks — the 
supposed temptations of single life — the supposed deterioration 
of character in any man who remains for long unmarried. If 
these objections are founded on truth, we may, of course, expect 
to find a fruit corresponding to the seed, i. e., a low moral 
standard produced by that (so-called) unnatural restriction. 
Speaking from fifteen years' experience, I must pronounce that 
the moral standard professed by our resident body is most 
exceptionally high. Offenses which the world considers venial 
are here regarded as penal ; they are punished by removal from 
office and withdrawal of permission to ' reside. ' In my own 
time two such cases have occurred. Not only was the sentence 
carried out, but all academic opinion endorsed it ; that opinion, 
though lenient enough to the undergraduate offender, is always, 
inflexible against the delinquent who ranks in the governing body. 
As another test of university moral feeling, I venture to com- 
pare it with what I hear from persons in other places, and mem- 
bers of other communities. I have rarely heard a celibate fel- 
low complain that he suffered in health from celibacy ; I have 
never heard a celibate fellow maintain that it was a physical 
necessity to gratify sexual desire. I have heard both these 
statements often made in London and on the Continent— made by 
men who were no way bound to be celibate, men whom nothing 
prevented from marriage except the lack of sufficient income. 
And in every case, as it seemed to me, their statement was a 
confession not of human nature, but simply of human weak- 
ness ; not derived from the promptings of instinct and passion 
within, but from the unworthy tone and example of friends and 
society without. I have come at length to believe that the draw- 
backs of collegiate celibacy are very much overstated. Indeed 



334: CELIBACY. 

I venture to go further, and to say that at the universities them- 
selves, these drawbacks, if they exist at all, exist in no per- 
ceptible degree. 

"This is partly due to the fact that the life of a college fel- 
low is intensely active and laborious. The real work of 
academic life begins only when the fellowship has been won. 
It would be difficult to find anywhere a body of men more con- 
stantly employed than the academic fellows, more versatile, 
more inquiring, more practical and energetic. For is there any 
class in England who receive so insignificant a payment for con- 
stant and serious exertion. Their healthful and regular employ- 
ment which is scarcely ever sedentary, confers, however, its 
own reward ; they have no time for self-indulgence, except in 
•one good item, the practice of hospitality. It is a positive fact 
of any fellow at Cambridge that he is generally to be found in 
one or other of three distinct positions, either working his brain 
or else working his muscles, or else as a host or guest at table ; 
all his amusements and recreations are of a vigorous ' gregari- 
ous' kind. Every one knows what a marked effect solitude 
stamps on any constitution ; solitude at Oxford or Cambridge 
is the rarest of all conditions. 

" Another fact which makes it easy to combine morality and 
celibacy is that, at either university, the men who remain as 
celibates are men of exceptional power, with nerve enough to 
be continent, with knowledge enough of life to know the value 
of such a regimen. Men with stronger animal and weaker 
moral nature rarely remain in a sphere like this, for which they 
feel unfitted; they make their way elsewhere, and soon vacate 
their fellowships ; the problem solves itself, and the college 
gains by the solution. Celibacy serves as a wholesome test ; it 
keeps for college service the best and the strongest mind, 
excludes from college service the weaker, more sensual creature. 

"If this conception of university life should seem to be 
formed on too exalted a scale, let readers remember that, as t 



CELIBACY. 33£ 

have stated, the conception no longer is carried out to its full 
original extent. 

' ' Marriage is now a recognized thing in the system of college 
fellowships. Men who do not feel themselves equal to giving 
their college an entire devotion, can now combine its service 
with the duties and comforts of married life. But the real fel- 
lows on whom immediately the college depends for its welfare, 
are still the celibate fellows residing within the walls. It is 
still to the self-denying celibate, and not to the man of mar- 
riage ties, that the university owes the best and the hardest 
part of college work. We may still affirm, and the facts still 
bear us out in affirming that celibacy can be well maintained in 
a highly educated class, that its maintenance gives immense 
advantage, and is quite consistent with the highest standard of 
practical genuine morality. 

"Let me, in conclusion, briefly state that the continence, 
which is an essential part of college life in its truest form, 
requires, no doubt, a peculiar caution in the choice of habits 
and amusements. Mr. Acton's advice as regards exercise and 
diet is invaluable, and the greater extreme to which that sys- 
tem can be carried, without injuring the health, so much the 
better. A man should go into training for a conflict with his 
appetites just as keenly as he does for the university eight, the 
only difference being that the training will be more beneficial 
and more protracted. Besides diet and exercise, let him be 
constantly employed ; in fact, let him have so many metaphor- 
ical c irons in the fire ' that he will find it difficult to snatch ten 
minutes for private meditation ; let his aleep be very limited 
and the temperature he moves in as nearly cold as he can bear ; 
let neither his eye nor his ear be voluntarily open to anything 
that could possibly excite the passions ; if he see or hear acci- 
dentally what might have this tendency, let him at once resort 
to muscular exercise, and keep it up till he is quite fatigued ; 
whenever any sensual image occurs involuntarily to his mind, 



336 CELIBACY. 

let him fly to the same resource, or else to the company of 
friends. Lastly, I would faiu add what Mr. Acton, looking 
expressly at the physical question, has of course passed over : 
let the sufferer from sexual causes make his affliction the sub- 
ject of most earnest prayer at any and all times to that Ear 
where no supplication is made in vain. Thus armed, he will 
keep his assailant at bay; the conquest is not impossible, 
although the struggle may sometimes be a severe one." 

There is something very pleasing about this manly utterance 
of an English scholar. In this as in all else, the discovery of 
the universal brotherhood of mankind is inspiring, and this 
clarion note from across the water, bearing testimony that the 
battle of life is everywhere the same, and that everywhere 
victory awaits the faithful soldier, should give courage to the 
faint-hearted and ambition to the spiritless. We have seen 
that no fear of physical disability, or of mental inferiority >. 
need inspire with dread the celibate. The familiar lines, 

"The heights by great men reached and kept 
Were not attained by sudden flight, 
But they, while their companions slept, 
Were toiling upward in the night," 

are as truly the property of the single man, as of the married. 
Those who, while living single lives, see to it that their 
energies are engrossed in worthy effort, their heads kept full of 
high purpose, their hearts encouraged to grow larger and ten- 
derer, may smile at those who croak of u a wasted being, and 
an unfulfilled destiny .' ' The purposeful celibate need not be* 
apprehensive of an inconsequential life. Even the possession 
of a warm human sympathy is independent of this condition. 
Married or single, 

" How far the gulf -stream of our youth may flow 
Into the arctic regions of our lives," 

each may, and must, determine for himself. We are so truly 
the arbiters of our own destinies that no pressure of surround- 






CELIBACY. 337 

ing circumstance can wrest from us the authority which we 
exercise over our own fate. Free from the dictation of outward 
surroundings, we decide, each for himself, whether it shall be, for 
us, growth or shriveling. Single and alone, we may yet fit 
ourselves for that larger life which is to follow this ; and with a 
redeemed manhood enter into the silent land. If fought in 
knightly spirit, the daily conflicts of our commonplace life are 
filling with joy the expectant years of that immortality which 
awaits our coming. 

" There is no end to the sky 

And the stars are everywhere 
And time is eternity, 
And the here is over there. 
For the common deeds of the common day 
Are ringing bells in the far-away." 



em 



CHAPTER VII 



MARRIAGE . 

It is with hesitancy that I write at the head of this page the 
title of the chapter. It is the evening of our national Thanks- 
giving festival, and to-day the noble band of sons and daughters, 
of chidren and grandchildren, have gathered at the old home, 
and around the home table. How long that table has to be that 
there may be room for every one — for it wouldn't seem like 
Thanksgiving at all if anybody had to wait. At the head of the 
table, with his silvery crown of whitened hair, sits the one 
whom the larger children call father, but the smaller children 
call him grandpa. And when all are seated there comes a hush 
— the little ones are all very quiet, wondering why their papas 
and mammas are so very still indeed, while the patriarch at the 
head of the table rises to his feet, and with outstretched hands, and 
uplifted face, and tremulous voice, gives thanks for all the way 
in which they have been lead in the years that are past, and asks 
the blessing for to-day which seems to descend and fill the room 
while he is still speaking. It is a day of days, this high feast- 
day of the family reunion. And now on the evening of such a 
day as this, whose sacred hours have brought to us a new reve- 
lation of the honor and dignity and joy of marriage and the fam- 
ily, what combination of words in its praise can do aught but be- 
little ? We have seen and felt to-day what no vocabulary can 
express, no language clothe. We understand to-day what Tholuck 
meant when he said that "the family was God's first Church," 
and Jeremy Taylor as he asserts that marriage is "the mother 
of the world, and preserves kingdoms, and fills cities, churches, 



MARRIAGE. 339 

and even heaven itself. " To attack it with the rude forms oi 
speech seems like the taking of a jewel in a soiled hand. Yet 
the words of Professor Huxley sound in my ears : ' ' We live 
in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty 
of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can 
influence somewhat less miserable and somwhat less ignorant 
than it was before he entered it. " There is ignorance, which 
brings its accompaniment of misery, in regard to marriage and 
the family; and while it may be a thankless task to dissect a 
poem, an ungracious labor to analyze a sacrament, yet the poem is 
so truly such that dissection cannot destroy it, and the sacrament 
is so sacred that analysis cannot profane it. As reverent learners, 
then, we enter upon our study, and may the lustre of the day 
reflect its hallowed light upon our research. 

It is beyond the bounds of possibility, to do more than consider 
some of the things which belong to marriage. Marriage itself as a 
complete and undivided whole, is beyond our grasp and greater 
than our conception. Most important of all the influences which 
mould men, the very warp and woof of the social fabric, no one 
has yet been able to write of it in its entirety that human limi- 
tations did not write weakness across the face of every page. 
The human mind can no more contain and unravel marriage, 
than it can contain and unravel the plan and purpose of that uni- 
verse which is above and beneath and around it, and of which 
our own solar system is but an insignificant fragment. The great 
First Cause finds fitting and constant symbol in the family — in 
fatherhood and motherhood and childhood — when He would re- 
veal Himself to the faltering understanding of man. The illim- 
itable universe is His world-system. The unfathomable family is 
His soul-system. To attempt the complete understanding of 
either is to try to crowd the infinite into the finite. 

But it is both our duty and our privilege to feel after the in- 
finite. Because we cannot know the whole, is no reason for 
neglecting the stars. Night unto night showeth forth knowledge. 



340 MARRIAGE. 

To grow toward the infinite is to live with a purpose. Though 
husband and wife be words of more meaning than we can lay 
hold of; though fatherhood be greater, and motherhood be deeper 
than our poor comprehension, we may yet learn something about 
the family. It is wholly within our possibilities to know some 
things about marriage which will help us, in our own personal 
experience of it, to reap the rich harvest of gladness which all 
right marriages bring with them. 

The estimate placed upon marriage, in the abstract so con- 
sidered, has run through all the variations between that of chat- 
telism on the one side, as in the commercial sale of heathen- 
dom, and that of sanctity on the other, as in the sacrament of 
the Roman Catholic church. In law, which takes cognizance 
only of the relations of individuals to each other, marriage is a 
contract. The doctrine of the common law is that a contract is 
sufficient to constitute marriage, without any official ceremony ;. 
and such is the law in some of our states. But after all, even 
the law cannot make marriage a mere contract. For it must be 
for life, it cannot be made and unmade ' at pleasure, and the 
contract between the two renders them incompetent to make a 
like contract with other persons. So the law is under the 
necessity Of recognizing in marriage, not a contract merely, but 
an institution as well. And as this institution is indispensable 
to the good order of society and the welfare of the State, it 
is always the policy of the State to make marriage, not diffi- 
cult, but easy ; so that it is not always easy to say what, in the 
eye of the law, is sufficient to constitute marriage, the courts 
having sustained very informal agreements of this kind, when 
shown to have been in good faith. "Marriage," says an 
English judge, u as understood in Christendom, may be 
defined as the voluntary union, for life, of one man and one 
woman, to the exclusion of all others." 

But whatever attitude the law may find it necessary to assume 
toward marriage in the exercise of its proper function, i. e., the 



MARRIAGE. 341 

preservation of equity between individuals, it goes without say- 
ing that this voluntary life-union is, to all the sincere-hearted, 
a sacrament of the sacraments ; that it has its root deep in the 
universal order of things, reaching back into the infinite 
design farther than we can hope to follow it. 

"Atom loved atom ages gone, and so 
The worlds were born!" 

The need of man and woman for each other, is only the 
human form of a universal need, the human expression of an 
omnipresent law. " Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet 
in every part of nature ; in darkness and light ; in heat and 
cold ; in the ebb and flow of waters ; in male and female ; in 
the inspiration * and expiration of plants and animals; in the 
equation of quantity and quality in the fluids of the animal 
body ; in the systole and diastole of the heart ; in the undula- 
tions of fluids and of sound ; in the centrifugal and centripetal 
gravity ; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity. Super- 
induce magnetism at one end of a needle, the opposite magne- 
tism takes place at the other end. If the south attracts, the 
north repels. To empty here, you must condense there. An 
inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half, 
and suggests another thing to make it whole ; as, spirit, matter ; 
man, woman ; odd, even ; subjective, objective ; in, out ; upper, 
under; motion, rest ; yea, nay." * But however profound and 
far-reaching may be the principle which, when applied to the 
human race, takes two individuals and gives us the unit of society, 
it is not with the abstract philosophy of marriage that we are 
chiefly concerned, but rather with the practical philosophy of 
every-day life in the family, as it must be lived from day to day, 
just as plain folk, such as you and I, must live it, if we live it at 
all. What does the sage of Concord say about it when the 
abstract is clothed upon with the garb of a living, breathing, 
feeling humanity % This. u A private and tender relation of 

* Emerson. 



342 MARRIAGE. 

one to one, which is the enchantment of human life ; which,, 
like a certain divine rage and enthusiasm, seizes on man at one 
period and works a revolution in his mind and body ; unites 
him to his race, pledges him to the domestic and civic rela- 
tions, carries him with new sympathy into nature, enhances the 
power of the senses, opens the imagination, adds to his charac- 
ter heroic and sacred attributes, establishes marriage and gives 
permanence to human society." 

Notice that the subtle mind of him who wrote these words is 
impressed with the "revolution" which marriage, and the sit- 
ting as a learner at the feet of Love which marriage implies, 
sets up within a man, increasing his power and value in every 
direction. One need not be a savant in order to perceive 
this marriage-brought endowment. We are constantly seeing 
it bestowed upon our friends. Are not the boys and girls of 
our acquaintance making, one after another, better husbands 
and wives than we had any idea that they could make ? Much 
better, even, than their own love-blind fathers and mothers had 
hoped % If, then, we find as the result such a noble expanding 
of character, it can but be that a young man is doing something 
very noble when falling in love. We are all fond of a joke, 
and if we can have a laugh by pointing our joke at him upon 
whose altar the flame of love has just been kindled, we do not 
hesitate to indulge it. Doubtless it is all right that we should 
have our laugh. But we must look to it that we do not carry 
our fun so far that we see in this divine awakening nothing but 
a cause for laughter. He who gives glad and tender greeting- 
to the new soul that takes possession of him when love is born 
into his heart, is doing a knightly deed. His courage is beyond 
the power of earth to conquer. All the imperfections and 
follies and sins of the great human family cannot make of him 
the heart-coward who strangles all that is best in himself 
because he so often sees that which is bad in others. u The 
absence of this power of loving is a mark of immaturity, of 



MARRIAGE. 343 

greenness, and clownishness of the heart." There is no phrase 
oftener on the lips of those who hold to widely divergent creeds of 
ethics than, " The proper study of mankind is man ; " and no 
one can hope to excel in that study who is separated from the 
mass of humanity ; no one can understand the great human 
family, or reach the measure of greatness of the human heart, 
who holds himself aloof from the loves which sway the life of 
mankind. Says Theodore Parker; " The affections deal with 
persons; with nothing but persons, for animate, and even 
inanimate, things get invested with a certain imaginary person- 
ality as soon as they become objects of affection. Ideas are 
the persons of the intellect, and persons the ideas of the heart. 
Persons are the central point of the affectional world. The 
love of persons is the function of the affections, as it is that of 
the mind and conscience to discover and accept truth and right. 
* * Love is the piety of the affections. * * Who 
shall tell me that intellectual or moral grandeur is higher in the 
scale of powers than the heart! It is not so. Mind and con- 
science are great and noble ; truth and justice are exceeding 
dear, but love is dearer than both. * * It is more fatal to 
neglect the heart than the head." 

When, in the material world, we pursue electricity into motion, 
and drive motion into heat, and chase heat into light, we recog- 
nize the fact that these are but different manifestations of the 
same energy, and we include all under the single word, force. 
Turning from the external world to the great human family, if 
we will follow the beatings of the human spirit from the hearth- 
stone to the battle-field, through science and literature and art 
and religion, we shall find that all noble energies are but trans- 
mutations of the one central and all-inclusive power we call love. 
And by as much as mind is greater than matter, by just so much 
is love grander than Niagara, more boundless than the sea. 
And as the unseen entrance of the steam into the heart of the 
ponderous and inert engine brings power to its arms and purpose 



34:4: MARRIAGE. 

to its being, so the invisible budding of love in the young heart 
puts meaning into life, and crowns endeavor with potency. 

**■ Through the rude chaos thus the running light 
Shot the first ray that pierced the native night: 
So reason in his brutal soul began ; 
Love made him first suspect he was a Man ; 
Love made him doubt his broad barbarian sound ; 
By Love his want of words and wit he found: 
That sense of want prepared the future way 
To knowledge, and disclosed the promise of a day. 
What not his father's care nor tutor's art 
Could plant with pains in his untutored heart, 
That best instructor, Love, at once inspired, 
As barren grounds to fruitfulness are fired : 
Love taught him shame, and shame with Love at strife, 
Soon taught the sweet civilities of life." 

"A century since in the north of Europe stood an old 
cathedral, upon one of the arches of which was a sculptured face 
of wondrous beauty. It was long hidden, until one day the 
sun's light striking through a slanted window revealed its 
matchless features. And ever after, year by year, upon the 
days when for a brief hour it was thus illumined, crowds came 
and waited eagerly to catch but a glimpse of that face . It had 
a strange history. When the cathedral was being built, an old 
man, broken with the weight of years and care, came and 
besought the architect to let him work upon it. Out of pity for 
his age, but fearful lest his failing sight and trembling touch 
might mar some fair design, the master set him to work in the 
shadows of the vaulted roof. One day they found the old man 
asleep in death, the tools of his craft laid in order beside him, 
the cunning of his right hand gone, his face upturned to this 
other marvellous face, which he had wrought there — the face of 
one whom he had loved and lost in his early manhood. And 
-when the artists and sculptors and workmen from all parts of 
the cathedral came and looked upon that face they said, ' This 
is the grandest work of all; love wrought this.' " 



MARRIAGE. 345 

Ah, what wonderful privileges come to each and all of us 
with this awakening ! Did you ever stop and think of it ? Does 
it sometimes seem to you that your lines have not fallen in 
pleasant places, that yours is not a goodly heritage ? Have 
you at times spent happy hours in homes which seemed even 
more favored than your own, and have you had a saddened 
feeling, in which there has been no taint of treason toward your 
own household, but which has come unbidden and in spite of 
your repulsion, that the atmosphere of your own home was not 
quite that atmosphere which would inspire you to the best things 
of which you were capable ? That the members of your own 
home circle were not quite those who could best stimulate and 
awaken the best that was in you, which so much needed stimu- 
lation and awakening ? That they did not understand you very 
well, and that you were being dwarfed and deformed by being 
misunderstood? Then let me say to you that you need not 
waste one poor, solitary regret upon these, as they seem to you, 
unfortunate surroundings. Two willing hands, and a real 
adhesiveness of purpose are all that is necessary to the earning 
of such a livelihood that you may set up a home of your own. 
Only think of it ! You who have so much wanted some one to 
whom you could tell everything, and who would always under- 
stand you perfectly ; you who have so sadly yearned for some 
one who should be more to you than the word "friend " could 
begin to describe ; who should be ever with you, strong when 
you were weak, ever seconding your best impulses, strengthen- 
ing your noblest purposes ; you who have felt all this so long- 
ingly, so wistfully, that it has become the pathos of your life — to 
you it is given to choose from all the world the only one in all 
the world who could be just this one, and win her for your 
wife. From all the world ? No, that was hastily written. For 

" Not from the whole wide world I chose thee, 
Sweetheart, light of the land and seal 
The wide, wide world could not inclose thee, 
For thou art the whole wide world to me." 



346 MARRIAGE. 

"What monarch ever dreamed of prerogative so kingly, what 
high-priest's visionings ever mounted to a privilege so sacred % 
And now your new-found honors crowd thick upon you. You 
have always had a wholesome contempt for sentimentality — 
now are you welcomed as a guest in the illumined halls of sen- 
timent. You have always felt an amused compassion for those 
weak enough to be " struck " — now are you clothed upon with 
the royal purple of the manliest love. You have always been a 
knight-errant — now you receive the cross of the Legion of Honor, 
as to you is committed the care and guardianship of the rarest 
of earth -imprisoned lives. You have felt that no opportunity 
has ever been given you to show of what mettle you were really 
made — now is placed in your hands the greatest trust of which 
the world knows, without hint of bond or surety. 

Nothing so develops the stalwart manhood of the real man, as 
the faithful discharge of great trusts. With what a trust are you 
honored ! She is the consummate flower of the household. For 
her that household has planned and toiled and prayed. For 
her no care has been thought too exacting, no anxiety too wear- 
ing, no expense too lavish, no sacrifice too great, no love large- 
enough. How has she been guarded against any blast from the' 
outside world! How carefully her steps directed in all her 
goings and comings ! Past all speech is the trust wherewith 
that father and mother trust you as she accepts your invitation 
and the front door closes behind you, and you are off together 
for an evening. They know full well that youth meets with, 
hot scorn those little conventionalities and proprieties which, 
maturer years have taught them are, after all, best observed in 
a world where the millennium has not yet come. They know 
that night is the great loosener of restraints for older people, 
and for younger people too. They know that what you would 
consider a harmless frolic, an innocent escapade to-night, which 
it would be the sheerest prudery to consider in the least objec- 
tionable, you would yourself at fifty think unwise for your own 



MARRIAGE. 34T 

children. They know all this, and knowing, they trust you. 
The father knows that the delineation of human passion upon 
the stage is somewhat intoxicating to young heads and hearts, 
as well as to old ones, yet he greets you very kindly as you 
come to take her, who is the very light of his eyes, with you to 
the theater, for Barrett plays Othello to-night. He trusts you. 
The mother is so afraid of horses that she never gets into a car- 
riage without fearing that some accident will happen. Yet she 
does not cloud your enjoyment by a single glance of foreboding 
as you lead out to the gate that daughter who is more to her 
than her own life, and in a light buggy behind a spirited team 
drive gaily out into the night. As the swift clatter of the hoofs 
dies out in the distance she may send a prayer after you, for she 
knows that all care for the nervy horses is apt to be forgotten in 
thought of the one who sits beside you, but she did not spoil 
your pleasure by any anxious glance. She trusts you. 

So the days go by. Are you winning her? You cannot 
answer. All you know is that you have not known yourself 
since 

"Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; 
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight." 

Is she winning you ? You have never suspected anything of 
the sort. But I suspect some friend of yours may be saying, — • - 

" Without his knowledge he was won, 

Against his nature kept devout; 
She'll never tell him how 'twas done, 

And he will never find it out. 
If, sudden, he suspects her wiles, 

And hears her forging chain and trap, 
And looks; she sits in simple smiles, 

Her two hands lying in her lap !" 

You only know, , and care only to know, that a new inspiration 
has taken hold of your life — has given that life a new meaning. 
Days pass on into weeks and weeks into months, and there 
is a subdued stir of preparation in the household ;. for on the- 



348 MARRIAGE. 

morrow the household treasure is to become your crown jewel 
<s of purest ray serene." You sit together under the open sky 
that evening. I would not for the world hear what you are 
saying to each other. None but yourselves ought to hear. But 
she is saying something like this, I know she is : — 

"If there be any one can take my place 

And make you happy whom I grieve to grieve, 
Think not that I can grudge it, but believe 
I do commend you to that nobler grace, 
That readier wit than mine, that sweeter face; 
Yea, since your riches make me rich, conceive 
I too am crowned, while bridal crowns I weave, 
And thread the bridal dance with jocund pace. 
For if I did not love you, it might be 
That I should grudge you some one dear delight; 
But since the heart is yours that was mine own, 
Your pleasure is my pleasure, right my right, 
Your honorable freedom makes me free, 
And you companioned I am not alone." 

You need not tell me whether she is saying anything like this 
or not, because I have no right to be told, and I am sure that I 
know without telling, and that you understand as never before 
that perfect love and perfect sacrifice go ever hand-in-hand. 
And as you stride down the walk, after the last reluctant good- 
night, it is with the consciousness of a larger manhood, for 

"Love kissed by wisdom wakes twice love, 
And wisdom is through loving wise;" 

and I hear you saying to yourself, 

" O, the years I lost before I knew you, love ! 
O, the hills I climbed and came not to you love I 
Ah, Who shall render unto us, to make us glad, 
The things which for and of each other's sake we might have hadt" 

To-morrow night has come. You feel a strange indifference 
for the brilliant company which crowds the parlors. You have 
room for but one to-night. Her mother is crying softly as with 
a mother's infinite tenderness she puts the finishing touches of 



MARRIAGE. 349 

arrangement upon the dress of that daughter whom a few short 
minutes shall make jour bride. Be not impatient with her 
because the tears which were unbidden refuse to stay away. They 
mean no distrust of you. It is the vision of the untried path- 
way before those tender feet. It cannot all be joy, and surely 
it cannot be all sorrow; but the sum of human joy and human 
sorrow will ever find crystal setting in human tears until that 
great day when our Father who is in heaven shall wipe away 
all tears from our eyes. 

But there is a hum of expectancy, a taking up of posi- 
tions, which you hardly realize till you are standing with 
her before the man of God. His calm, solemn words sound 
clearly upon the silence, — "Appealing to your Father who 
is in heaven to witness your sincerity, you do now take this 
woman whose hand you hold — choosing her alone from all the 
world — to be your lawfully wedded wife. You trust her as 
your best earthly friend. You promise to love, to cherish, and 
to protect her ; to be considerate of her happiness in your plans 
of life ; to cultivate for her sake all manly virtues ; and in all 
things to seek her welfare as you seek your own . You pledge 
yourself thus honorably to her, to be her husband in good 
faith, so long as the providence of God shall spare you to each 
other." 

u In like manner, lookiag to your Heavenly Father for his 
blessing, you do now receive this man whose hand you hold, to 
be your lawfully wedded husband. You choose him from all 
the world as he has chosen you. You pledge your trust to him 
as your best earthly friend. You promise to love, to comfort, 
and to honor him ; to cultivate for his sake all womanly graces ; 
to guard his reputation, and assist him in his life's work ; and 
in all things to esteem his happiness as your own. You give your- 
self thus trustfully to him, to be his wife in good faith, so long 
as the providence of God shall spare you to each other."* 
* Quoted by Miss Phelps in "Men, Women and Ghosts." 



"•350 MARRIAGE. 

The covenant is sealed, the word is pronounced, the sacrament 
is complete. How passing fair is she, beneath her crown of 
orange blossoms. With a great trust have the father and 
mother trusted you. But she who has placed her life in your 
keeping — what shall we say of a trust that is measureless, that 
is infinite ? What greater honor has this world to confer upon 
any man than is awarded to you in the bestowment of this 
imperial trust? As you think of these things you resolve over 
and over again that the trust shall be held most sacred, that 
you will guard her tenderly from life's tempests, that no harm 
shall come nigh her while your arm retains its strength and 
your heart does not cease to beat. You look forward into the 
coming weeks, and remember that every single individual day 
those weeks contain, shall bring with it your inalienable right 
to each other for all its hours ; a blissful right recurring with 
each dawn, renewed by every sunset. "It is altogether 
a different existence by the side of a dear wife, from such 
a desolate and lonely . one as mine was even in sum- 
mer. Now for the first time I wholly enjoy fair nature, 
and live in it. Things about me again array themselves in 
poetic forms. What a beautiful life I lead now ! My existence 
has gained a harmonious continuity ; not passionately excited, 
but clearly and calmly my days flow on. A few years more, 
and I shall live in the full enjoyment of my mind — nay, I hope 
to return to my youth ; an inward spring of poetic life will 
restore it to me. ' ' f 

It seems almost too good to be true, that all this should really 
be for you, and you draw her arm yet more closely through your 
own that you may assure yourself that there is no mistake about it 
all. She looks up to you and smiles, and you are satisfied ; and 
while your inner self is filled with thoughts like these, your 
outer self has moved mechanically through the formalities of 
the reception, till now the company has dispersed, and the car- 

f Schiller. 



MARRIAGE. 351 

Tiage is waiting to take you to the train. Many things have 
come to you by intuition in the past few hours, which you had 
-not known before, and you are confident that you understand 
life's pathways, and need no counsel from anyone, nor would 
you brook a cold discussion of that which is revealing itself to 
you through a hallowed experience. 

I am glad that you would not. I should have a poor opinion of 
the man who would. But two of your old-time chums, who were 
here to-night, may now be seen sitting in their bachelor room, with 
coats and boots off, in easy rather than elegant posture, discus- 
sing the question, with sapient coolness, whether, after all, you 
are to be congratulated upon the evening's consummation 
which they have witnessed. They set you down as a capital 
fellow, and very much in love of course ; but they shake their 
heads sagely and agree that you will find that you are not now so 
free to come and go when and where you please ; that you 
have assumed additional care, fresh obligations and increased 
expense; that they are not sure, by any means, that the play 
is worth the candle ; they are inclined to think on the whole 
that they would not change places with you ; and that their 
superior and calmer judgment will suffice to keep them from a 
like boyish devotion to any woman. In fact, it is more than 
probable that by the time the wedding trip is over, and you 
have settled down to real life for a few months, and had the 
veil of fancy torn away by the inexorable hand of reality, you 
will come around to pretty much their way of thinking. It is 
all very nice and romantic to fall in love, but as we can't 
always stay up in the clouds, and as common, every-day life 
isn't at all romantic, but distressingly matter-of-fact, it stands 
to reason that to fall in love is one thing, but to stay in love is 
quite another, if not an impossible thing. So while you do not 
want me to talk to you, you are quite willing, I am sure, that I 
should talk with these friends of yours. 

There are several things that I wish to say to them. I 



352 MARRIAGE. 

wish to point out to them that their line of argument par- 
takes more of the nature of special pleading than of 
an impartial judicial consideration of the case upon its 
real merits. What they say reminds me of what was 
once said to the greatest teacher the world ever saw. When 
He told His little circle of learners who had put them- 
selves under his especial teaching, that the old ideas of mar- 
riage were unworthy, and that men must not put away their 
wives merely to gratify a whim, it seemed to them so irksome a 
restraint that they petulantly exclaimed, "If the case of the man 
is so with his wife, it is not expedient to marry." And their 
impatience was met with the simple words, "All men cannot 
receive this saying, but, tkey to whom it is given." It is so 
with these chums of yours. Your education of the past few 
months at the hand of that teacher whose magic touch unlocks 
the doors which bar the way to unsuspected wealth of head and 
heart, has put a wide gulf between yourself and them. What 
comes to you as an intuition, is to them a hard saying. When 
Jane Eyre is made to say of herself and her husband, "To be 
together, for us, is to be as free as in solitude — as gay as in 
company," you do not stumble at the saying; to them it is 
devoid of sense. 

When it is asserted that the married man is not so free 
to come and go, geographically, as before, by reason of 
his added cares, obligations and expenses, that is stated 
which may be literally true. But it is assumed that these new 
duties bring with them no adequate compensation — and this is 
not true. Would you be a South Sea Islander rather than Presi- 
dent of the United States, because the Islander has no social 
obligations whatever, while the President can hardly know a 
moment's freedom from their remorseless pressure % The com- 
parison is not overdrawn. The darkened iieart of the Islander 
would find nothing but discontent in the actual performance of 
presidential duties. He would yearn for the free, untram- 



MARRIAGE. 353 

melled wilds of the savage life. And these chums think they 
would do the same were they married. And the reason that 
they can be taught the better way so much more easily than the 
Islander, is because the dawn of love in their hearts, can lift 
them up to a larger life as the rising sun lifts the world out of 
darkness into day. Who, then, would be a boy going a-tishing, 
rather than the commander of armies, because the boy has not 
a particle of responsibility resting upon his shoulders, 
while the commander is well nigh crushed by its weight ? 
"Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Calhay." All 
testimony of married people is unequivocally in favor of the 
dual life ; save, perchance, some solitary voice from one- who 
has abused its high estate. Truly might it be sung of husbands 
and wives as it has been sung of the bumble-bee ; 

" Seeing only what is fair, 
Sipping only what is sweet, 
Thou dost mock at fate and care, 
Leave the chaff and take the wheat." 

Let the added cares of married life come in fullest force, " all 
other pleasures are not worth its pains," and the broadening 
shoulders of a larger manhood, the stouter heart of a com- 
panioned life, are ignorant of any increase in life's burdens* 
Then, too, by the most unsuspected object teaching, are we 
learning the most difficult of life's lessons. When some rever- 
end teacher insists that all selfishness is unhappiness, and that 
happiness is found always and only in self-sacrifice, we shrug 
our shoulders and say all that is excellent as moral philosophy, 
but we beg to be excused from practicing it. Yet before we 
are aware, a new and strange something has taken possession of 
us, and we are not happy save when showing our love by our 
forgetfulness of self; and the more that forgetfulness shines 
out in our action the better are we satisfied, the happier are we 
— and all unconsciously have we demonstrated the moral phi- 
losophy to be the practical philosophy of life as well. " What 

(23) 



354 MARRIAGE. 

do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each 
other? " Does it not pay? And in spite of all newly incurred 
obligations, is not the wife, after all, 

" The guardian angel o'er his life presiding, 
Each pleasure doubling and each care dividing ? " 

Let us then shake off our old selves, made miserable 
through the narrowness of selfishness, and welcome that 
forgetfulness of self which ushers in a broadening happiness 
that is without bound, a deepening joy unfathomable. " Life," 
writes Horace Greeley, u is a bubble which any breath may 
dissolve ; wealth or power a snowflake, melting momently into 
the treacherous deep across whose waves we are floated on to our 
unseen destiny ; but to have lived so that one less orphan shall 
be called to choose between starvation and infamy, to have 
lived so that some eyes of those whom Fame shall never know 
are brightened, and others suffused at the name of the beloved 
one, — so that the few who knew him truly shall recognize him 
as a bright, warm, cheering presence, which was here for a sea- 
son and left the world no worse for his stay in it, — this, surely, 
is to have really lived, — and not wholly in vain." 

Again, our friends have raised two other points of which I 
would speak. The first finds expression in the remark about 
being superior to any such boyish devotion to any woman. 
Devotion is inseparable from its object. It is strong or weak, 
noble or ignoble, manly or base, only as its object is worthy or 
unworthy. Devotion to great truths, to right principles, to the 
public good, has always been esteemed the highest development 
of manly character. So to sneer at the devotion of the mar- 
ried man to his wife is not to question devotion, but woman. 
In what particular is she unworthy of your true and manly 
devotion ? Do you think her inferior to yourself in intellectual 
strength ? The reports from the university examinations fail 
to support your opinion. "The London University honor 
lists, which have just been published, show that the young 



MARRIAGE. 355 

women who were examined took a remarkable place. The 
class taking examination for mathematical honors had three 
members, one being a girl, and the girl beat both her male 
competitors. The first in the English honors list for the pre- 
liminary B. A. examination was a young woman, and in the 
German honors list two of the first class, consisting of only 
four, were also girls. The first in the honors list for anatomy 
in the preliminary bachelor of medicine examination was a 
girl — Miss Prideaux, of the London School of Medicine for 
Women — who had beaten" both her Guy's Hospital rivals. 
Another girl was one of three students placed in the first class 
of the honors list for materia medica and pharmaceutical chem- 
istry." * Again, we are told that Miss Helen Taylor, the step- 
daughter of John Stuart Mill, is "a woman who holds an aris- 
tocratic audience spellbound in a duke's drawing-room, when 
speaking on the dignity of labor ; a woman who commands the 
breathless attention of 3,000 or 4,000 workingmen, when 
expounding the moral obligations of capital." Please tell us 
just how far below your own are these intellectual achievements? 

Do you think her inferior to yourself in ability to bear a hand 
in what is ordinarily considered as going to make up the 
world's work ? There is no more honorable field of activity 
among all the vocations of which the world has ever heard, 
or to which it has turned its hand, than the building of a home. 
It is a pleasure, when making examination for life-insurance, 
and the applicant chances to be a woman, to set over against 
4 ' Occupation," the grandest work of the world, "Home- 
keeper." How bare and forlorn do such words as "Dress- 
maker," "Music Teacher," "Stenographer," look beside it. 
But our bachelor friends cannot appreciate this. They think 
of the world's work as being something entirely outside of, 
perhaps in a measure the antithesis of, the home. 

Yery well. If they will understand it better, we shall not be 

* New York Independent. 



356 MARRIAGE. 

in any way embarrassed by taking up our position on their own 
ground. There comes before me a vision of clanking looms and 
swift-plying shuttles, superintended by an army of nimble-fin- 
gered girls, in the great cotton factories of 'New England. 
Woman is not unequal, it seems, to the making of those things 
which the world needs, if you do not ask that her time and 
strength be given to the making of a wife. The vision changes, and 
I see Caroline Herschel by the side of her no greater brother, as 
they keep nightly vigil with the everlasting stars, working out for 
him the laborious mathematical calculations, and jealously hiding 
her own discoveries, that the fame of this brother may be the 
greater. Woman is not unequal, it seems, to the deepest 
science, if you do not ask that her time and strength be given 
to the shedding of that sunlight, moonlight, starlight which 
makes home and wife the universe of the heart. The vision 
changes, and where billow is piled on billow, between the con- 
tending lines where sea and sky make onslaught one upon the 
other with mighty shock, I see a fragile boat held to its purpose 
by the fearless heart of Grace Darling. Woman is not unequal, 
it seems, to the giving of battle to the tempest when all the 
winds of heaven are unloosed, if you do not ask that her time 
and strength be given to the making of a wifely harbor for your 
storm-tossed heart, where wind and waves are still, and golden 
sands and flower-embowered banks seem almost to belong to 
the celestial shores. The vision changes, and I see an untutored 
peasant girl of eighteen years, leading a veteran army of men to 
victory. The hot breath of battle blows fiercely against the 
fair cheek of dawning womanhood, paled with the excitement of 
the fray, but there is not a moment's hesitancy, nor slightest 
tremor. She turns her pale, inspired face toward me as she 
issues a command, and 1 see that it is Joan of Arc, the Maid of 
Orleans. Woman is not unequal, it seems, to the bearing of 
all the terrors and buffetings of war, if you do not ask that her 
time and strength be given to the daring of pain and death 



MARRIAGE. 357 

upon the heights of motherhood. The vision changes, and I 
see the fair form of a woman going down into that Crimean 
slaughter-pen, unlocking the stupidly-imprisoned hospital sup- 
plies, and caring for the dead, comforting the dying, and win- 
ning the wounded back to life. Woman is not unequal, it 
seems, to broad humanitarian enterprises, if you do not ask 
that her time and strength be given to the living of the life of 
the wife who heals all hurts, and takes the sting from all the 
world's injustice. The vision changes, and 1 see a woman 
brought up in modern paganism, ruling her pagan people in so 
queenly a fashion that one of the foremost journals of our 
country is compelled to say for Ranavalona, — "Measured by 
her opportunities, by her steadfast adherence to the right, by 
what she accomplished for her people and for Christianity and 
civilization, this black sovereign is worthy to be ranked amongst 
the good and true of the world's best white queens. Let her 
name be enrolled with those women of royal position for whom 
the world has an honorable place in its history. " Woman is 
not unequal, it seems, to the direction of the affairs of a nation, 
if you do not ask that her time and strength be given to the 
direction of that miniature kingdom of heaven, the home. 
Again the vision changes, and I see a great multitude of men, 
magnificent men of all ages, past and present, living and dead 
the men whose wealth of head and heart has been the world's 
suberb inheritance, the men of all ages who have been great 
in statesmanship, in letters, in business enterprise, in philos- 
ophy, in philanthropy. And by the side of each there walks a 
companion, and her form is that of a woman ; and they are all 
alike crowned, both men and women. And they see my won- 
der, and the august assemblage of men whom the world calls 
great, make answer a3 one voice, saying, All we did do our 
work amidst great toil and discouragement, and overcame 
many obstacles; and when we should have fainted, lo these who 
are crowned with us now were also with us then, else had we 



358 . MAERIAGE. 

fallen by the way. " She was my inspiration," were the words 
of Wendell Phillips when speaking of his wife. Opening an 
artist's portfolio of paintings, where Indian-summer tints still 
live unveiled by winter snows, I find, above the whole, this 
inscription: " To my Mother, whom, — with capacity and ambi- 
tions for any plane of life, — I have ever known in woman's most 
patient sphere, laborious house-keeper, anxious care-taker, faith 
ful home-maker. ' ' 

How far inferior to your own best achievements are these which 
we have seen? Yet these belong to your especial field of activity, 
not hers. Into her special departments of life-work, as wife, and 
mother, and keeper of the household, you cannot attempt 
to follow her as she follows you into yours. Man and woman 
have each their respective work to do, and it is very silly child's 
play to attempt to prove either inferior to the other. And 
when any young lady discovers that the young man who is 
spending the evening with her, does so as whiling away an hour 
with an inferior, she ought to have her father pick him up and 
carry him out and set him down gently in the gutter to think. 
I suggest the gutter because I want him to think, and the 
ordinary man must have surroundings in a measure consonant 
with his mental status if he is to do any solid thinking. I fear 
me that the number of young men who make sad work of the wed- 
ding ceremony is larger than we like to confess to ourselves. 
Externally they get through it well enough, and what the min- 
ister says is well enough, but they misunderstand him wonder- 
fully. As he repeats the usual form, he who ought to be a man, 
hears it something after this fashion : You do now take this 
woman whose hand you hold to be your partner in the lawful 
prostitution of one to one. You promise to see to it from the 
first that you have your own way in all things. You pledge 
yourself faithfully to demand of her the most unlimited physical 
gratification for yourself, regardless of any loss of health which 
may result to her. If you should be so unfortunate as to have; 



MARRIAGE. 359 

any children, you promise to see to it by all ingenious devices 
that none of the care of the same shall fall upon your shoulders. 
You further agree to so conduct the monetary affairs of the 
household that she will be compelled to make special request to 
you for each individual purchase which it may become necessary 
for her to make. You promise to see to it that she attends thor- 
oughly to the housework ; does not gad around among neigh- 
bors and friends ; and demeans herself in all things like the 
dutiful wife we have described. 

Then, as the minister turns from him to her who stands by 
his side, his unworthy ears thus translate the sacred service : 
In like manner, you do now take this man whose hand you hold, 
or rather, let him take you. You pledge yourself to him for 
whatever he pleases, for the man is the head of the woman. 
You promise in all meekness and humility of spirit to accept his 
dictation in all matters. You promise never to forget that he is 
his mother's idol; that the idol has been somewhat wild, but 
this proves him to be of rare talent, far above the ordinary slow- 
plodding, good, unpretentious young man ; and to you is com- 
mitted the mission of saving the idol. In this virtuous calling 
you promise to receive anything and everything at his hands, 
without question ; to take care of his house, his children, hie 
good name ; and, in all things, be his toy so long as you suit 
his darling fancy, and at the end of that time to become his faith- 
ful house-keeper, while he amuses himself with new toys. You 
thus pledge yourself to him for better or for worse, with the 
probabilities altogether in favor of the worse. 

It is the man whose heart so translates the sacred ceremony, 
who is worthy of all contempt for stealing the love and trust of 
any woman. He has nothing to offer her in return but a heart 
which is a house of ill-fame, a home which shall be the hollow- 
est of mockeries. Do not, I beseech you, for a moment con- 
found this hideous orgy with the divine institution whose hon- 
orable name it purloins ; this hideous cave of the passions, with 



360 MARRIAGE. 

the heaven-lighted home. In the quaint phrase of Bacon, 
"Nuptial love maketh mankind, friendly love perfecteth it, 
but wanton love corrupteth and embaseth it." 

The remaining count made by our friends in their indictment 
of marriage, lies in the assumption that every-day life and 
romance, matter-of-fact and matter-of-love, every-day life upon 
the earth and life up in the clouds, the humdrum of the daily 
round of common duty and the fairy freshness of the lustrous 
wedding garment, are not merely in contrast, but in conflict as 
well, and cannot be coexistent in any such sense as would 
imply the best realization of both. To this assertion I would 
make answer that the contrast of discord is one thing, and the 
contrast of harmony quite another. The flaming daub from 
which all perception of nature, and all human-heartedness is 
conspicuously absent, carries with it no mandate which shall 
chain the inspired hand of the true artist to a single tint. A 
little child climbs upon the knee of the organist and reaching 
out it presses down all the keys which both its little hands can 
cover, and hears with infant glee the discords it has awakened. 
Shall, therefore, he who is master of thundrous pedal and 
plaintive upper tone, shun the closest harmony ? Shall he play 
with but a single finger ? Because there are vandals who take 
up the harp of life only to break its strings and rouse the harsh 
clamor of discord with rude and ruthless hand, shall we in 
silence dumb refuse to " touch the quivering strings" of life's 
divinest harmonies ? You have not questioned romance, com- 
panionship and love, the unseen and eternal; but it has seemed 
to you that the daily duties, the daily drudgeries, the things 
seen and temporal, were at war with what might be the highest 
delight of life. A little thought, I am sure, will convince you 
that this seeming is a mistaken seeming ; that the contrast is 
that of harmony, not that of discord. What is the proper rank 
of the meanest of these daily tasks ? Could further concession 
be made than to let the impatient Thomas Carlyle answer this 



MARRIAGE. 361 

•question for us ? What does he say ? "All true work is sacred ; 
in all true work, were it but true hand-labor, there is something 
of divineness." 

So asserts Carlyle, and some of us recall an old fashioned 
book which enjoins us to be "not slothful in business, fervent 
in spirit," which is the same truth in different phrase. There 
lies a deep philosophy behind the words of the old cobbler ; — 
" My business is serving the Lord; but I mend shoes to pay 
expenses." Would your ideal eliminate all the prosy functions 
of daily household life, and make marriage a grand holiday 
where the sweetest of companionships should be perpetually 
enjoyed amid Alpine peaks and Italian sunsets, and never be 
subjected to the strain of disagreeable little tasks, never done, 
daily recurring, exasperating by virtue of their very inconse- 
quence? Then let me tell you that such a life would land you 
in an hysteric sentimentalism whose dry rot would eat through 
and through every fibre of your manhood. There is something 
of divineness in the meanest work nobly dpne ; there is some- 
thing of degredation in the noblest pleasure when made a pur- 
suit. Love is divine, and love is not the deifying of self; in 
all true-hearted work there is something of divineness, and 
true-hearted work is self-sacrifice. Love is vicarious, and work 
is vicarious, and neither can live without the other, and together 
they grow to that gigantic power which keeps in motion the 
mighty engines of the world's energies. Play and rest, as 
recreation, are God-given. As a pastime, hell-born. 

You are, perhaps, looking forward to the time when it will 
not be necessary for you to work, and you mean by that the 
attainment of such vantage-ground that your daily bread and 
needed clothing and shelter will be provided without calling 
for your daily labor to earn them. I hope you may realize 
your anticipation. But if you are a true man, I can tell you 
something which you may not have guessed. It is this. The 
time will never come when you will lay down work and take up 



3G2 MARRIAGE. 

play. You have been born into this world of work, and you 
will work harder and harder until you go out of it. To-day 
you are not worth a dollar. When you are worth a hundred 
thousand dollars you will be a harder worker than you are 
to-day. It may be, it will be, a larger, a more congenial work ; 
your harness will not gall you as much, but it will be work for 
all that. For if you are a true man the day will never come; 
when you will want to make play your business. 

If you ever make the attempt to "sit and sing yourself away 
to everlasting bliss," you will find yourself sounding depths of 
hollowness in human experience incredible to yourself. Bliss 
is waiting to be won, but not in any such booby fashion. With 
a stout courage starting out each morning upon the day's work 
as it comes to us, returning each evening with an honest heart 
made glad in the faithful doing of that work, before we know 
it, we have up and worked ourselves "away to everlasting 
bliss." So we come to comprehend the saying of Horace 
Bushnell that perfect work is perfect play. So we learn to hate 
the thought of ever laying down the active exercise of our 
manly energies. So are we taught to recognize that 4 marriage, 
and family life, and work, and love, and self-sacrifice, and 
sturdy courage are the complemental forces which up-build the 
staunchest manhood. "As for happiness, " says Dr. ]STapheys r 
"those who think they can best attain it outside the gentle yoke 
of matrimony are quite as wide of the mark. Their selfish 
and solitary pleasures do not gratify them. With all the 
resources of clubs, billiard-rooms, saloons, narcotics, and stimu- 
lants, single men make but a mock show of satisfaction." 

Fully pursuaded in his own mind of the validity of all these 
claims made for the benefits conferred by marriage, the young 
man still finds himself confronted with questions of serious 
import concerning this most important relation in life. This is 
one of the few subjects upon which he does not feel able to pro- 
nounce instant judgment, in whatever aspect presented — upon 



MARRIAGE. 363 

which he is really glad of judicious counsel. When, a baby 
boy, his eyes first saw the Jight, he was not more helpless than 
he now feels in anticipation of this second birth into a new and 
altogether different existence. At the time of William Cullen 
Bryant's marriage he sent this letter to his -mother: 

"Dear Mother: I hasten to send you the melancholy intelligence of 
what has lately happened to me. 

Early on the evening of the eleventh day of the present month I was at a 
neighboring house in this village. Several people of both sexes were assem- 
bled in one of the apartments, and three or four others, with myself, were in 
another. At last came in a little elderly gentleman — pale, thin, with a solemn 
countenance, pleuritic voice, hooked nose, and hollow eyes. It was not long 
before we were summoned to attend in the apartment where he and the rest 
of the company were gathered. We went in and took our seats ; the little 
elderly gentleman with the hooked nose prayed and we all stood up. When 
he had finished most of us sat down. The gentleman with the hooked nose 
then muttered certain cabalistical expressions which I was too much frightened 
to remember, but I recollect that at the conclusion I was given to understand 
that I was married to a young lady of the name of Frances Fairchild, whom I 
perceived standing by my side, and whom I hope in the course of a few 
•months to have the pleasure of introducing to you as your daughter-in-law, 
which is a matter of some interest to the poor girl, who has neither father nor 
mother in the world. 

I have not 'played the fool and married an Ethiop for the jewel in her 
ear.' I looked only for goodness of heart, an ingenuous and affectionate 
disposition, a good understanding, etc., and the character of my wife is too 
frank and single-hearted to suffer me to fear that I may be disappointed. I 
do myself wrong; I did not look for these nor any other qualities, but they 
trapped me before I was aware, and now I am married in spite of myself. 

Thus the current of destiny carries us all along. None but a madman 
would swim against the stream, and none but a fool would exert himself to- 
swim with it. The best way is to float quietly with the tide. So much for phi- 
losophy — now to business. 

Your affectionate son, 

William/' 

Taking for our motto the last sentiment of this open-hearted 
letter, perhaps we cannot "to business" better than to attempt, 
in the first place, to get a clear conception of the objects of 
marriage. Many wise people, however successful they may 



864 MARRIAGE. 

have been in living the married life, have made woeful blunders 
in trying to state the object of marriage. The great Hufeland 
Writes himself down after this fashion : " By marriage I under- 
stand, a firm, sacred union of two persons, for the purpose of 
mutual support, and for giving origin to and educating chil- 
dren." There is not a young man of my acquaintance who 
would give his assent to either of these asserted purposes. 
Heaven protect them all from the folly and sin of marrying a 
girl for her money ; and aside from this ill-starred contingency, 
any young man knows that it is as easy for him to support him- 
self, as himself and family ; neither does a young man marry 
because his intended wife needs support. We may safely rule 
out this proposition. w 

The other motive assigned is equally wide of the truth, though 
it may not be as easy to show its fallacy. Young married people, 
and young people contemplating marriage, do not covet the wed- 
ded life because of a desire for children. In fact, the majority look 
upon possible children as a decided drawback. I shall have some- 
thing to say of this matter directly, pointing out where the mistake 
is made, and what a blunder it is to be frightened at the baby faces 
which we see in the picture of the future's possibilities. But I 
have no heart to blame young people, looking forward to mar- 
riage, for a negative absence of the desire for children. Their 
desires are fully occupied with each other, and it is right that it 
should be so. We cannot expect to find an eye which has never 
seen a worthy building, thirsting for St. Peter's. But right or 
wrong, as a matter of fact it is seldom the case that a young 
tjouple approach marriage for the sake of potential children. 

The real impelling power which ought to lead, and does lead, 
a young man to marriage is the promise it holds out of love, of 
companionship, of sympathy, of happiness in the best sense of 
the word, of the most perfectly rounded life. Not that he 
necessarily recognizes the precise want, or the precise promise. 
Tears before you know what it is, or that it is really what you 



MARRIAGE. 86& 

want, or just what it does for you, you seek, and find satisfac- 
tion in, water. It is in the majority of cases, without doubt, 
the unknown want, and the unerring instinct, which leads up to 
the wedding day. Trust the instinct. It will not mislead you. 
It will do for you what you might fail to do for yourself. It 
will save from a penury of life which you otherwise might inflict 
upon yourself. 

I have no desire to overlook the drawing toward marriage 
which comes of that peculiar passion, half physical and half 
spiritual, which is bound up with the fact of sex, and may be 
called the appetite or instinct of sex. I am glad of that, too. 
It, too, is right. Do not make the wretched mistake of think- 
ing it wrong. I know many well-meaning people have helped 
that impression to find lodgement in your heart. It is a traitor. 
Get it out. It is hard to have patience with those who prate 
of " mere animal gratification." It cannot be that. I am not, 
sure but that we wrong it when we call it one-half that. Cer- 
tain it is that even the veriest libertine would be without it were his 
poor, distempered imagination blotted out. What if it have 
not reached, at the very first, the highest estate \ Shall we 
grind under our heel the less admirable jack-in-the-pulpit, be- 
cause it has not yet become the calia lily? Make it not a fugi- 
tive. Give it a right to be, and see how fair a thing it may be 
made. "Therefore the Deity sends the glory of youth before 
the soul, that it may avail itself of beautiful bodies as aids to its 
recollection of the celestial good and fair ; and the man beholding 
such a person in the female sex runs to her and finds the high- 
est joy in contemplating the form, movement, and intelligence 
of this person, because it suggests to him the presence of that 
which indeed is within the beauty, and the cause of the beauty. 

u If however, from too much conversing with material 
objects, the soul was gross, and misplaced its satisfaction in the 
body, it reaped nothing but sorrow; body being unable to ful- 
lii the promise which beauty holds out ; ^but if, accepting the 



3(56 MARRIAGE. 

hint of these visions and suggestions which beauty makes to his 
mind, the soul passes through the body and falls to admire 
strokes of character, and the lovers contemplate one another in 
their discourses and their actions, then they pass to the true 
palace of beauty, more and more inflame their love of it, and 
by this love extinguishing the base affection, as the sun puts out 
fire by shining on the hearth, they become pure and hallowed. 
By conversation with that which is in itself excellent, mag- 
nanimous, lowly, and just, the lover comes to a warmer love 
of these nobilities, and a quicker apprehension of them. Then 
he passes from loving them in one to loving them in all, and so 
is the one beautiful soul only the door through which he enters 
to the society of all true and pure souls. In the particular 
society of his mate he attains a clearer sight of any spot, any 
taint which her beauty has contracted from this world, and is 
able to point it out, and this with mutual joy that they are now 
able, without offense, to indicate blemishes and hindrances in 
each other, and give to each all help and comfort in curing 
the same. And beholding in many souls the traits of the divine 
beauty, and separating in each soul that which is divine from 
the taint which it has contracted in the world, the lover ascends 
to the highest beauty, to the love and knowledge of the Divinity, 
by steps on this ladder of created souls. 

"Somewhat like this have the truly wise told us of love in all 
ages. The doctrine is not old, nor is it new. If Plato, 
Plutarch, and Apulcius taught it, so have Petrarch, Angelo, 
and Milton. It awaits a truer unfolding in opposition and rebuke 
to that subterranean prudence which presides at marriages with 
words that take hold of the upper world, whilst one eye is 
prowling in the cellar ; so that its gravest discourse has a savor 
of hams and powdering-tubs. Worst, when this sensualism 
intrudes into the education of young women, and withers the 
hope and affection of human nature by teaching that marriage 



MARRIAGE. 367 

signifies nothing but a housewife's thrift, and that woman's life 
has no other aim." * 

When it is asserted that love, companionship, sympathy, 
iiappiness, a symmetrical life, are the objects of marriage, it is 
not to be understood that marriage is the attainment of these 
things, but that it is the means, more powerful than all other 
agencies, of attaining these ends. Marriage is not love. Marriage 
is not happiness. It is only the royal road to both. So, in spite 
of its importance, it is not to be considered the one aim of 
existence. Now and then a young man makes himself unworthy 
in the eyes of his friends, because he loses sight of this distinc- 
tion, and pursues marriage as hotly as if it, in and of itself, 
were the sole and ultimate goal of life. Mistaking the means 
for the end, he makes but a foolish appearance in the mad chase 
after marriage before he may fairly be counted as ready for it. Do 
not throw aside well chosen life-plans in the mistaken attempt 
to compass marriage at all hazards. 

Should it be necessary to remind you that you cannot afford, 
when you are married, to be unhappy ? Remember for what 
you married. Does not un happiness overturn every object for 
which heart was joined to heart? Many a battle-scarred soldier 
holds the name of u Mother Bickerdyke " in grateful remem- 
brance. For her care for him routed death and brought back 
life. In a contest with the surgeon-in-charge over a matter of 
red-tape versus the welfare of her sick soldiers, she exclaimed: "I 
always said Tom Bickerdyke would have lived ten years longer 
if he hadn't all the time been trying to boss me ! " Though, 
doubtless, a travesty upon her home life, it was, nevertheless, 
a saying packed full with the practical philosophy of right 
living. 

Somewhere I have heard the story of a couple who, when the 
minister pronounced them one, asked him "Which one?" 
Stay a bachelor all your life, if you do not mean to strive that it 

* Emerson. 



368 MARRIAGE. 

shall be — not merely suffer it to be — neither one, but both. Or,, 
if worst comes to worst, that it shall be your wife. If it ever 
comes to the question which shall u give up," and that question 
you allow to be a question, you have, for the time being, over- 
thrown every good which can come to you through marriage. 
Every time you set your way aside, that her way may be the 
way, no matter how foolish or unreasonable that way may seem 
to you — doing so in no niggard fashion, but glad that you can 
do this small thing for her — you have doubled the matrimonial 
dividend. 

What of the obstacles to marriage ? As might be expected, 
the obstructions which may legitimately stop the way to that 
state which is the natural one for mankind as a whole, are few 
and well defined. The really permanent barriers do not num- 
ber more than two. The first is found in consanguinity. Per- 
haps none is more constantly present in the popular mind than 
this of immediate blood-relation. By quite general consent, 
the limit of approach to a common origin which may be per- 
mitted those contemplating marriage, is fixed just outside the 
circle of cousins. The prevalent opinion is that it is better that 
marriage between cousins be not allowed. There is little ques- 
tion but that this opinion is a correct one, and the prohibition 
salutary. 

Yet the supposed facts upon which this opinion is grounded, 
turn out to be not fact, but fiction. The union of cousins has 
been supposed to be almost certainly followed by children both 
mentally and physically lacking. But this notion proves to be 
pure superstition. Investigation fails, notably, to endorse the 
notion. But as few families are without a tendency to some 
form of physical disease, and as few families have not some 
mental peculiarity which it were well to soften ratker than 
intensify, and as both these undesirable attributes must almost 
by necessity be magnified by the marriage of cousins, the atti- 
tude of society toward such unions is beyond doubt wise and 



MARRIAGE. 369 

commendable. There is nothing to be gained by taking this 
real, and unnecessary, risk. Even plants are protected from 
this danger. u At the close of the last century Sprengel pub- 
lished a most suggestive work on flowers, in which he pointed 
out the curious relation existing between these and insects, and 
showed that the latter carry the pollen from flower to flower. 
His observations, however, attracted little notice until Darwin 
called attention to the subject in 1862. It had long been known 
that the cowslip and primrose exist under two forms, about 
equally numerous, and differing from one another in the arrange- 
ment of their stamens and pistils; the one form having the 
stamens on the summit of the flower and the stigma half-way 
down, while in the other the relative positions are reversed, the 
stigma being at the summit of the tube and the stamens half- 
way down. This difference had, however, been regarded as a 
case of mere variability ; but Darwin showed it to be a beautiful 
provision, the result of which is that insects fertilize each flower 
with pollen brought from a different plant, and he proved that 
flowers fertilized with pollen from the other form yield more 
seed than if fertilized with pollen of the same form, even if 
taken from a different plant. Attention having been thus 
directed to the question, an astonishing variety of most beauti- 
ful contrivances have been observed and described by many 
botanists, especially Hooker, Axel, Delpino, Hildebrand, Ben- 
net, Fritz Muller, and, above all, Hermann Muller and Darwin^ 
himself. The general result is that to insects, and especially to 
bees, we owe the beauty of our gardens, the sweetness of our 
fields. To their beneficent, though unconscious action, flowers 
owe their scent and color, their honey, nay, in many cases, 
even their form. Their present shape and varied arrangements, 
their brilliant colors, their honey, and their sweet scent are all 
due to the selection exercised by insects."* 

*Sir John Lubbock. 

(34) 



370 MARRIAGE. 

The other barrier which may justly stand a permanent bar 
against the marriage relation, is found in the presence of certain 
hereditary diseases having their existence as constitutional taints 
in the person of the prospective father or mother, or both. Of 
course, you should possess a fair degree of health before enter- 
ing upon the founding of a home, for many reasons beside the 
well-being of prospective children. Should you doubt whether 
you could fairly be rated at par in health matters, a reasonable 
attention to physical culture, under the aid and direction of your 
physician, will be sufficient, ordinarily, to place you beyond 
question. Marriage is a conservator of health, and with a fair 
degree of health at the start, you need have no fear for the 
future. All this is understood. But the question in hand is 
quite a different matter; and a very weighty one. Every young 
man should be made clearly to understand that consumption, 
insanity, and cancer are clearly — I had almost written inevit- 
ably — hereditary. Blood will tell. Unknown horses gaining 
great victories, always prove to have had first-rate ancestors. 
For the rule works both ways. It is not too much to say that 
no one commands a closer attention than Dr. B. W. Richard- 
son, of London, when speaking on sanitary subjects. These are 
his words on the intermarriage of disease: u The induced 
diseases of modern life cannot justly be considered without a 
brief, — and it shall be a brief, — reference to one of the most 
solemn of their predisposing causes. I mean the intermarriage 
of disease by the union of persons who are strongly tainted 
with fatal maladies which must in the ordinary course of events, 
appear in their offspring. It is the common impression that 
injuries of this class are only effected through marriage of con- 
sanguinity. Hence marriage between cousins is objected to; 
but in plain truth the question of consanguinity is secondary. 
There is no doubt that if cousins, each possessing an original 
family taint, marry, the result may be doubly disastrous to the 
offspring. This, however, is not on account of the consanguinity, 



MARRIAGE. 371 

but because both persons are similarly infected with the taint. 
I mean by this that if they had not been related, and had been 
similarly infected, the results to their offspring would be the 
same. 

' ' We ought, therefore, to take a much wider view of the sub- 
ject than that which is bounded by consanguinity. 

" The worst intermarriages of disease are those in which both 
parents are the inheritors of the same disease, as where both 
are disposed to consumption, to cancer, or to insanity. Under 
these circumstances it is all but impossible for the majority of 
the offspring to escape the inherited disease. 

" Intermarriages of distinct diseases are hardly less dangerous. 
The intermarriage of cancer and consumption is a combination 
specially fraught with danger. Let one typical illustration of 
this suffice. A young man of marked cancerous proclivity 
married a woman whose parents had both died of pulmonary 
consumption. This married couple had a family of live chil- 
dren, all of whom grew up to adolescence, sustaining at their 
best but delicate and feeble existences. The first of these children 
died from a disease allied to cancer, called lupus ; the second of 
simple pulmonary consumption ; the third, owing to tubercular 
deposit in the brain, succumbed from epileptiform convulsions ; 
the fourth, with symptoms of tubercular brain disease, sank 
from diabetes, the result of the nervous injury ; and the last, 
living longer than any of the rest, viz., to thirty-six years, died 
of cancer. The parents, in this instance, survived three of the 
children, but they both died comparatively early in life ; the 
father from cancerous disease of the liver, the mother from 
heart disease and bronchitis. 

"The intermarriage of rheumatic with consumptive disease is 
productive of intermediate maladies in which the bony frame- 
work of the body is readily implicated. Children suffering from 
hip-joint disease, — morbus coxarius, — are common examples of 



'6T2, MARRIAGE. 

this combination. Hydro-cephalic children are frequent results 
of the same combination. 

" The whole of this subject is a modern study in the natural 
history of disease. Some day it will be so formularized that the 
learned physician will be able to predict the results of combina- 
tions of disease from marriage, with arithmetical accuracy* 
Whether such knowledge will control the results is a question 
difficult to answer at this point of time. 

"In the present state of our civilization, rank and position 
are considered all-important elements in the marriage contract. 
Wealth is considered. Relative age is sometimes taken into 
account. Religion and race are often made subjects of serious 
moment. Hereditary health as an element of the marriage 
contract, of what import is that ? Who are so lightly studied 
as the unborn % * * * 

" The first step towards the reduction of disease is, begin- 
ning at the beginning, to provide for the health of the 
unborn. The error, commonly entertained, that marriageable 
men and women have nothing to consider except wealth, sta- 
tion, or social relationship, demands correction. The offspring 
of marriage, the most precious of all fortunes, deserves surely 
as much forethought as is bestowed on the offspring of the 
lower animals. If the intermarriage of disease were consid- 
ered in the same light as the intermarriage of poverty, the 
hereditary transmission of disease, the basis of so much misery 
in the world, would be at an end in three or at most four gen- 
erations."^ 

There is one other disease which should make a young man 
halt ere he leads an unsuspecting bride to the altar. That dis- 
ease is syphilis. More will be said of it in a succeeding chap- 
ter. With a tenacity which makes it impossible to say whether, 
when once contracted, the system may ever become entirely free 
from it ; with a subtilty which would make it impossible to- 

^Diseases of Modern Life. 



MARRIAGE. 373 

determine when the body was actually rid of it, were such a 
casting out possible ; with the strongest tendency to show its 
hideous trail upon the faces of innocent children ; the worst 
poison known to science stands a perpetual menace between its 
victim and the setting up of a home. "Take into view the 
fact that he who dips himself in the seas of ink ceases to be 
marriageable. A most delicate theme, you say, to mention to 
university students. Would God that it were mentioned some- 
where every week in the ears of young men in colleges. Would 
God that the future fire of the hearthstone could lie as a living 
coal on every tempted heart in our circles of young men in uni- 
versity towns. When I left Phillips Academy a great professor 
in Andover Theological Seminary said, in a farewell address to 
my class, and the remark was full of an orthodoxy which I hope 
will be found at Andover for centuries to come, in all its old 
earnestness and fire: ' In view of the temptations of a college 
life, it would be well for every young man to have laid on his 
heart a living red-hot coal of God Almighty's wrath.' That 
sentence burned me through. Here and now, I will not say 
anything quite as startling, but I say: Put upon the heart 
of young men large gatherings of coals out of their anticipated 
future family fires. Take the burning incense off the marriage 
altar, and put it, while yet you are in college, on your heart, 
and through the ascending clouds of that holy oblation vice 
will reveal itself to you as the unspeakably odious thing it is."* 
To the young man contemplating marriage certain pruden- 
tial questions present themselves. First in order comes that of 
the proper age. The age which it is best that he should attain 
before marrying, and the number of years which wisdom would 
place between his own age and that of his wife, are questions 
which confront every thoughtful young man. Let us grasp 
firmly the fact that marriage is physiological, and that therefore 
its proper observance should strengthen health, not weaken it. 

*Joseph Cook. 



374 MARRIAGE. 

Holding this clearly before our minds we shall not misunder- 
stand the admirable precept that " completion of the phys- 
ical frame should precede procreation." The reason for this is- 
plain. The two great tasks which the body must accomplish 
are, first, the building up of itself to that stature and hardihood 
which shall make it equal to life's toil ; and, second, the par- 
entage of the succeeding generation. If before the first be 
completed, a part of the forces are withdrawn from that work 
for the performance of the second, poor work in both depart- 
ments will be the natural result. It is safe to say that a young 
man should reach the age of twenty-five years before consider- 
ing his physical frame complete, and ready for the second great 
work devolving upon it. "Previous to the twenty-third year, 
many a man is incapable of producing healthy children. If he 
does not destroy his health by premature indulgence, he may 
destroy his happiness by witnessing his children a prey to 
debility and deformity. An old German proverb says, ' Give a 
boy a wife, and a child a bird, and death will soon knock at the 
door.' Even an author so old as Aristotle warns young men 
against early marriage, under penalty of disease and puny off- 
spring."* 

But having once fairly gotten your growth, the sooner you 
marry, the better. No other time promises so well for yourself 
and your children as just this time, when you are in the very flush 
of early manhood. Dr. William Pratt, of England, fairly bristles 
with good sense as he takes up the defense of early marriages. 
He says: — " I am in favor of early marriage. It is nature's 
appointed plan for gratifying and calming youthful passion. 
Unfortunately the middle-class world scowls upon early wed- 
lock, and stamps it as a most impudent thing for young people to- 
marry who have not the income of their fathers. Mrs. Grundy 
keeps her finger ever lifted high, and cries, 'Don't. Anything 
but that! ' And generally it is anything but that ! Yet I say 

*Dr. Geo. H. Napheys. 



MARRIAGE. 375 

to young people, if you have good health, and if you be sensi- 
ble enough to despise the notions of a foolish society, and not 
to seek to ape the rich in their style of living ; if you can live 
on plain fare, that is to say no wines nor beers, and only birchen 
furniture, and not be in the least disturbed because Mr. So-and- 
So dines better, and Mrs. So-and-So dresses better — if you can 
do this as common-sense, strong-minded men and women, if 
you love one another, and understand one another's minds, and 
are willing to strive uphill together, then — marry. You will 
be happier, you will be steadier, you will be purer, and in every 
likelihood you will succeed better in the world ; and having 
learned and practiced contentment with little, when prosperity 
comes you will be the better able to turn it to good account for 
yourselves and others. That is excellent advice of the old. say- 
ing, 'Marry for love, and work for money.' And there are 
some good things in this quaint Scottish song : 

' When John and me were married, 

Our hauding was but sma\ 
For my minnie, cankert carlin, 

Wou'd gie us nocht at a', 
I spent my fee wi' canny care, 

As far as it wou'd gae, 
But well I wot our bridal bed 

Was clean pea strae. 

' Wi' working late and early 

We're come to what ye see, 
For fortune throve beneath our hands, 

So busy aye were we. 
The lowe o' love made labor light, 

I'm sure ye'll and it sae, 
Tho' ye should mak your bridal bed 

0' clean pea strae/ 

u Do not believe for a moment that the poetry of life is 
exhausted when the marriage knot is tied. The post-connubial 
bliss is sweet if it be sober, and durable if it be gentle. Nov- 



376 MARRIAGE. 

elists generally wind up their tales at marriage, as the bourne 
beyond which no story can go. After that all must be tame. 
And poets have sung most ardently of the pleasures of court- 
ship, as if Hymen extinguished all delights. And satirists 
have chuckled and laughed over the sorrows and troubles, the 
scoldings and quarrels of ill-matched or brutal wedlock. And 
in many circles there is talk of the bands and bonds of matri- 
mony, and of the necessity to have out one's fling before sacri- 
ficing one's liberty. But all that needs no refutation. In a 
physical point of view — with which view we have principally 
to do here — the wedded life is the complete life of man. A 
man without a woman is an incomplete being, and his life is an 
imperfect existence. Even in a social aspect it is the wedded 
life which is the foundation of every community, great or small, 
which means to endure. And certainly the joys of home, and 
the pleasures of family, though they be accompanied by some 
cares, far outweigh all the enjoyments of single life, dignified 
though it may be by the euphemism of single blessedness. 
There is much and genuine poetry in sharing sorrows with 
another, all whose sympathy is sure, in the soft prattle by a 
mother's knee, and in little arms twining round a father's neck 
— infinitely more than in the shout of bacchanalians, or in the 
songs of hired sirens. 

"Not that I wish to be understood as advising hasty, ill-con- 
cocted marriages, or marriages formed without the consent of 
parents or guardians. By no manner of means. Nearly all 
such marriages turn out wretchedly ill. All I recommend is 
marriage, though the means be comparatively scanty, if the 
health be good, the heart sound, and the prospect fair. At the 
same time 1 never counsel any young man to rush into matri- 
mony without studying for a considerable time his proposed 
life-comrade ; and I would add that both he and she should 
together look at their probable future, and be prepared hope- 
fully to face difficulties, and, if needs be, to bear penury. The 



MARRIAGE. 377 

union of two such sensible people will always meet with the 
approbation of sensible parents. There is no fear for such a 
couple. They may begin with a bridal couch of 'pea straw' — 
though such a lowly commencement is generally not commenda- 
ble. But if you be without fortune, and the intended help- 
mate is too delicate or too dainty to help herself, or to look 
after the details of a household, from the making of a bed to 
the cooking of a potato, it is better to abstain from wedlock, 
at least for the present. To marry under such circumstances 
would certainly be rash. Poverty is almost sure to come upon 
such an ill-starred, helpless pair, and, ' as poverty comes in at 
the door, love will fly out at the window.' The objects for 
which marriage has been entered into, namely, home and its 
comforts, will be unattained, and the very vices which marriage 
was meant to prevent will very likely not be avoided, but being 
committed by a married man, they will be rendered more hide- 
ous, and perhaps be aggravated, as is too often the case, by the 
additional vice of inebriety. 

" Of course by early marriage I do not mean marriage when 
the first sensations of sex are felt. Marriage before twenty-one 
in either man or woman is to be deprecated. It is not health- 
ful. The human frame is not sufficiently matured, and as a 
consequence the offspring are almost sure to be weakly, while 
the parents are apt to have their own health completely shat- 
tered. According to the statistics, the married life is not only 
the purer, producing the minimum of evil-doers and criminals ; 
it is also by far the most healthy. Take the male sex, and it is 
seen that from twenty-five to thirty years of age, 1,000 married 
men furnish 6 deaths ; 1,000 bachelors furnish 10 deaths ; 1,000 
widowers furnish 22 deaths. The figures, however, become 
very unfavorable if the marriage be contracted before twenty. 
Out of 8,000 young men married before twenty, their mortality 
has been found to be, before marriage, only 7 per 1,000 ; after 
marriage, 50 per 1,000. With respect to the female sex we 



378 • MARRIA6KE. 

find a similar advantage of marriage over celibacy, but on the 
same condition. If young girls be turned into wives before 
twenty a like mortality befalls them which befalls the other sex. 
Everywhere young married people from eighteen to twenty 
years of age die as fast as old people from sixty to seventy 
years of age. The common sense and common law of Western 
Europe have with perfect justice marked twenty-one as the age 
of maturity. After that epoch, however, marriage should be 
contracted as soon as practicable. It is the healthiest and the 
happiest life ; the best for the individual and for the community. 
"Timorous legislators and disciples of Malthus deny that; 
early marriage is the best for a country already well peopled. 
Accordingly they throw all manner of obstacles in its way. 
They compel the mass of our soldiers and sailors to be bache- 
lors. They offer the majority of public appointments to unmar- 
ried men, as premiums for celibacy. This is, however, a bad 
policy. By it our rulers encourage a vast amount of sin and 
wickedness, and foster a contagious disease which no Act of 
Parliament will ever remove, and ultimately induce a diminu- 
tion in the general health and vigor of the population. It 
would certainly be more in conformity with morality and with 
true statecraft did our public men rather encourage emigration, 
provide education, and advocate upon every platform economy 
and moderation in eating, drinking, and dressing, and give the 
examples in their own homes and persons, so as to form a pub- 
lic opinion which should stamp respectability, not upon the men 
of large income and good clothing, but upon the men of simple 
worth, irrespective of all externals. At the same time most 
offices should be given in preference to the honest struggling 
married men, and that horrible phrase ' without incumbrances ' 
should be banished from our language, and expunged from 
among the articles of every appointment. Early marriage 
might then become the fashion, to the great diminution of 
vice, and without the least increase of our pauperism. On the 



MARRIAGE. 379' 

very contrary, the descendants of young, vigorous, and healthy 
parents would be vigorous and healthful themselves, and simply 
but sufficiently fed, well educated, and nourished in every good 
principle, they would grow up sure of success in the world ; and 
did ever the old folks need help, which after a life of thrift and 
virtue would be an exception, the children would be the first 
ungrudgingly to give it. Parents in the workhouse with sons 
and daughters living would be unknown. Again an old song: 

' When Sandy, Jock, and Janetie 

Are up and gotten lair, 
They'll help to make the boatie row, 
And lessen a' our care. 
• * * * 

'When we are auld and sair bowed down, 

And hirplin frae the door, 
They'll help to keep us warm and dry 
As we did them before.'* 

Although Dr. Pratt advises marriage as soon after reaching 
the age of twenty-one ' ' as practicable, ' ' twenty-five would more 
nearly represent the aggregate of opinion held by physicians. 
But the idea remains the same, be the standard placed at the 
greater or lesser age. The principle back of both is this ; be- 
fore the attainment of complete physical development, marriage 
is undesirable, if not hurtful ; after such attainment, the sooner 
the young, man marries the better. All medical men hold to 
this principle, though they may differ as to the precise age 
which insures physical maturity. And there are many external 
influences, which, by determining that the daily habit of life 
shall be in this direction or that, move the mark of physical 
completion up or down the scale of years. 

This standard of age applies to the physical man alone. 
Mentally the rate of development is so entirely a matter of indi- 
vidual idiosyncrasy and training, that no rule can be given which 

*A Physician's Sermon to Young Men. 



3 SO MARRIAGE. 

shall be even approximately correct. If you are a boy at 
twenty-five, wait until you become a man ; it will be no damage 
to you physically. 

On the difference which should exist between the ages of hus- 
band and wife, there is marked disagreement between those 
ideas which have received popular acceptance, and the opinions 
of those who have written on the subject. It is popularly sup- 
posed that a difference of two or three years is most to be de- 
sired . Yet Lycurgus, the Spartan legislator, in an age and 
State where the ruling purpose was physical perfection and en- 
durance, held that the man should not marry before thirty-seven, 
and the woman not before seventeen ; and Aristotle endorsed this 
opinion in asserting that the husband should be the elder by 
twenty years. Even our own best authority of modern times 
on these topics, says: "I think there should always be an 
interval of about ten years between a man of* mature age, and 
his wife . Women age much more rapidly than men, and as 
the reproductive functions should cease in both partners about 
the same time, some such interval as this is evidently desirable. 
Still, if a man will marry whilst young, there are so many risks 
of unhappiness from his marrying a mere child of fifteen or 
sixteen, that it would be well in such cases to seek a companion 
somewhat nearer his own age."* Michelet takes much the 
same ground : "In the first place, I would wish Agnes to have 
a husband of an age suitable to her own. I have before given 
the proportion: twenty-eight years in the man to eighteen in 
the woman. To depart from this rule there will need to be very 
special affinities between you, very singular and very rare, too ; 
these maybe found, but seldom are." While Bourgeois con- 

*Acton. — He is, however, hardly self consistent, as I find him writing 
on another page of his work, " My advice to all young men above twenty- 
five, who are in good health, is, to marry as soon as their circumstances enable 
them to maintain a wife. Everything tends to prove that the moderate grati- 
fication of the sex-passion in married life is generally followed by the happiest 
consequences to the individual. And no wonder, for he is but carrying out 
the command of the Creator — 'Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the 
earth ' — in the way appointed by the Almighty Himself." 



MARRIAGE. 381 

tends : " It is necessary that the body shall have accomplished 
its growth ; that the functions shall have completed their evolu- 
tion ; that the intelligence shall have acquired its power, and 
the heart its treasures. Then only is there maturity, — procrea- 
tive maturity: it is nubility, the age of marriage. Buffon, Haller,. 
Flourens, Beclard, and the greater part of physiologists, fix nubil- 
ity, in the temperate climates, at the twentieth year for woman, 
and at the twenty-fifth year for man. It varies a little, accord- 
ing to the constitution, the morbid predispositions, or the state 
of health of each individual. Almost never should the con- 
jugal association take place before these ages." 

I am inclined to think that Bourgeois and popular opin- 
ion are in the right. What leads men of signal weight into so 
wide a variation of testimony, is the mistaken attempt to include 
in a single statement physical completeness, mental fitness, anxi 
simultaneous decline of the special function of reproduction. I 
would insist only upon the physical completion, and make that 
che sole test in fixing an eligible age. Not before twenty-five 
for yourself, not before twenty or twenty-two for your wife. 
Beyond this minimum limit no rule can be fixed. You may be 
older mentally at twenty-five than another man at thirty-five, or 
vice versa. The same is true of your wife . Neither is it at all 
probable that you will be precisely alike in the rapidity of 
mental development. She may develop early and you late, or 
you may be a man and she a child. Be sure in this that you be 
guided by the real facts of what you both really are, unconfused 
by the artificial measure of your years. 

Finally, if there are good reasons for so doing, do not be 
afraid to wait. Such waiting is courage ; not to wait is 
cowardice . There are many young men who relinquish their plan 
and hope of a liberal education to gratify their inordinate haste 
to enter upon married life. Their heaviest loss is not that of 
the academic education, but in the surrender to their weaker 
selves, and the consequent loss to their manliness of character. 



382 MARRIAGE. 

Do not fear to wait, for if she be worthy love of man she will 
gladly wait ; and pleasures fairly earned are doubly sweet ; and 
the day will surely come when we may write of you, 

" But now, with servitors to do his will, 

In the grand villa, half-way up the hill, 

Sat at the Christmas feast, and at his side 

Monna Giovanna, his beloved bride, 

Never so beautiful, so kind, so fair, 

Enthroned once more in the old rustic chair, 

High-perched upon the back of which there stood 

The image of a falcon carved in wood, 

And underneath the inscription, with a date, 
'All things come round to him who will but wait.'" 

If, then, we are to be patient learners in that school of disci- 
pline which teaches us to labor, and, if needs be, to wait, shall 
we apply the lesson to engagements to marry, as well as to 
narriage itself? Those difficulties in the way of wife and 
jome, which the great majority of young men must first meet 
and surmount, that perfection of physical growth and estab- 
lished mental timbre which all should first attain, these things 
which delay us in coming into our best possessions, do not 
necessarily forbid the promise of that possession. The young 
man who is not worth a cent in the world may hold the most 
precious promise of a wife ; for the costliest things of life are 
beyond the ken of dollars and cents. He who knows full well 
that his intellect needs further training in scholastic halls or in 
the workshop of the world, may yet be at home in the subtlest 
reach of rationalistic philosophy, for "the heart has reasons 
which reason cannot understand." Shall, then, he who waits, 
wait with the promise or without it ? Is a long engagement or 
a short one most to be desired ? Is there anything in the whole 
subject of engagements, long or short, beyond the circumstan- 
ces, caprice and preference of the individuals concerned ? 

Dr. Acton quotes from a work issued by the Young Men's 
Christian Association, a paragraph favorable to engagements 



MARRIAGE. 383 

which may be somewhat protracted, and continues: — "This 
opinion has been entertained by many excellent men ; but if 
we examine it from a medical point of view, it is very doubtful, 
to say no more, whether it is desirable for any youth, who has 
his way to make in the world, to attach himself to a girl early 
in life, however purely and faithfully. If an adult is in a position 
to marry, by all means let him do so . If his sexual desires are 
strong, the power of the will deficient, and if his intellectual 
faculties are not great, early marriage will keep him out of 
much mischief and temptation. All medical experience, how- 
ever, proves that for any one, especially a young and suscepti- 
ble man, to enter into a long engagement without any immedi- 
ate hope of fulfilling it, is physically an almost unmitigated 
evil. It is bad for any one to be tormented with sexual ideas 
and ungratified desires year after year. The frequent corres- 
pondence and interviews cause a morbid dwelling upon thoughts 
which it would be well to banish altogether from the mind ; and 
I have reason to know that this condition of almost constant 
excitement has often caused not only dangerously frequent and 
long-continued nocturnal emissions, but most painful affections 
of the testes. These results sometimes follow the progress of 
an ordinary two or three months' courtship to an alarming 
extent. The danger and distress may be much more serious 
when the marriage is postponed for years. 

"I am aware that to the more romantic of my readers these 
warnings ma}' be very distasteful. Their idea of love is that it 
is a feeling too pure and spiritual to be defiled with any earthly 
alloy. I confess that I doubt whether any but the inexperienced 
really entertain this notion. During the first passionate delight 
of an attachment, no doubt, the lower and more mundane feel- 
ings are ignored. But they are present nevertheless ; and 
according to my professional experience, are tolerably certain to 
be aroused in every case sooner or late. Of course, where the 
affection felt is true and loyal, they may be corrected and kept 



384 MARRIAGE. 

within the strictest bounds of the most respectful tenderness £ 
to do this, however, in the case of a protracted engagement is 
a far harder task than the ardent and poetical lover allows him- 
self at first to think." 

The betrothal of a mere boy of fifteen or eighteen years of 
age, to a mere girl of proportionate years, is always a painful 
spectacle to the right-minded and sensible. Dr. Holcombe welL 
says that "we differ as much from our own selves at different; 
times as we do from each other," and the chances are that the 
boy and girl who fancy that they know each other so well, will 
wake up some fine morning to find that they are quite strangers- 
to each other, to their no small mental pain and shock. But 
farther than this I do not care to go, and I have little sympathy 
with the words of Dr. Acton just quoted. The pith of his- 
argument is contained in the affirmation that it is "bad for any 
one to be tormented with sexual ideas," and that bad results 
from this cause "sometimes follow the progress of an ordinary 
two or three months' courtship." All this is true enough, but 
it is the danger which besets the pitiably weak man, and him 
alone ; and I assert without fear of contradiction that ne> man. 
has a right to be weak, that no man has any right to be other 
than strong. I mean strong as to purpose and will, not strength 
of physique. For the issue depends upon purpose and will, 
not upon the habit of body. Away then with the flimsy excuse 
that one man is born with strong will and another with weak, 
that one. man is born with stability of purpose and another 
vacillating. Away with the sexual argument against engage- 
ments ; and let us all set about that cultivation of will and pur- 
pose which can make the weakest a tower of strength and the 
arbiter of his own destiny ; and let us say to our appetites, thus 
far shalt thou come and no farther, neither shalt thou presume 
to deny to thy master the best earthly companionship which 
may come into his life. It may be a "far harder task than the 
ardent and poetical lover allows himself at first to think," but 



MARRIAGE. 385 

the hardest battles are best worth the fighting ; and what man- 
ner of men should we become if we systematically evaded life's 
conflicts instead of meeting them squarely and fighting them 
through manfully? I am much more in sympathy with Bour- 
geois, who answers back from the other side of the English 
Channel: — "The ancient custom of betrothals is the safeguard 
for the purity of morals and the happy association of man and 
wife. This institution was known to the Greeks, the Hebrews, 
the Romans, and during the Middle Ages. In Germany it has 
still preserved its poetical and moral character. The young 
people are sometimes affianced many years before their mar- 
riage. We see the young man, thus betrothed, with heart full 
of his chaste love, absent himself for a time in order to finish 
his education ; to perform his studies of science, art, his appren- 
ticeship to a trade ; and to prepare himself for manly life. He- 
returns to his betrothed with a soul which has remained pure, 
with a reason enlarged and fortified. Then both are ripe for 
the austere duties of marriage. 

"Chaste love, consecrated by betrothals, can be cultivated in 
the midst of work. It lightens toil, it banishes ennui, it illu- 
mines the horizon of life with delightful prospects ; it excites, 
in the young man, the manly courage and the high intelligence 
to create for himself a position in the world ; in woman, the 
noble ambition to perfect herself to become a worthy com- 
panion and good advisor. 

"During the stormy period of youth, it is the only means of 
preserving the virgin purity of the heart and of the body. 
Does any one believe that young men who in good season have 
in their heart a love, strong and worthy of them, would pro- 
fane themselves, as they so often otherwise do, in vile affec- 
tions, in those relations of a day, giving themselves a holocaust 
to beauty without soul, or even to licentiousness without 

beauty ? 

(25) 



886 MARRIAGE. 

" Unions, thus projected in advance, — freely, from recipro- 
cal esteem, — give time to become acquainted with each other, to 
appreciate and to fit themselves for each other. 

u How far are we, in France, from this prudent delay in mar- 
riage! We marry in haste, by chance, without becoming 
acquainted. How could we not be deceived in one another, 
even without wishing to be ? So, in the place of love, of inti- 
macy, and mutual aid in maiiiage, how many are there who 
find only coldness, repulsion, intolerable burdens, continual 
troubles! " 

Most important is the influence of engagement in expanding 
the young man and young woman into a broader, deeper, 
sweeter, and truer manhood and womanhood. I recall many 
an instance in my personal acqaintance in which this sudden 
and substantial growth in both has seemed to me little less than 
marvellous. To this influence we owe the fact that young men 
and women are continually surprising us by making much bet- 
ter husbands and wives than we had dared to hope that they 
£Ould, by any possibility, ever become. " Exalting the most 
noble sentiments, fortifying the intelligence and the will, it 
impels sometimes to the highest destinies. How many poets 
has it created, orators, heroes, artists, savants I Tissot 
speaks of a young man who at the age of twenty years still 
appeared so stupid that he would have been the laughing-stock 
of society, if his goodness and modesty had not turned ridicule 
aside. As ignorant as one could be, his conversation was com- 
monplace, even trivial. He became smitten with a very beau- 
tiful young Spanish girl who did not know the French language, 
;and who had no desire to learn it. His passion became violent. 
In order to converse with his sweetheart, he began the study of 
her tongue. Then, little by little, his language became ani- 
mated, easy, fall of ideas and charms. In fine, his sleeping 
faculties took wing. At the end of fifteen months, he was a 
man truly interesting and instructed." 



MABRIAGE. 387 

" The history of the painter Quyntyn is still celebrated. He 
had pursued the business of farrier for ten years at An vers, 
under the name of Mesius. He became amorous of the daugh- 
ter of a painter, who refused him her hand, swearing at the 
same time that she would only give it to a painter. Strong in 
his passion, he quit the hammer, and took up the pencil. He 
was very soon so good a painter that the father accorded him 
his daughter with great pleasure. He became celebrated ; and 
the pictures which remain from him are still valuable." Charles 
Dickens, that great delineator of, and sympathizer with, humani- 
ty's every-day struggles, in his best work bears testimony to 
this same increase of incentive to do and be. "I had heard 
that many men distinguished in various pursuits had begun life 
by reporting the debates in Parliament. Traddles having men 
tioned newspapers to me, as one of his hopes, I had put the 
two things together, and told Traddles in my letter that I 
wished to know how I could qualify myself for this pursuit. 
Traddles now informed me, as the result of his inquiries, that 
the mere mechanical acquisition necessary, except in rare cases, 
for thorough excellence in it, that is to say, a perfect and entire 
command of the mystery of short-hand writing and reading, was 
about equal in difficulty to the mastery of six languages ; and 
that it might perhaps be attained, by dint of perseverance, in 
the course of a few years. Traddles reasonably supposed that 
this would settle the business ; but I, only feeling that here 
indeed were a few tall trees to be hewn down, immediately 
resolved to work my way on to Dora through this thicket, axe 
in hand. 

'"lam very much obliged to you, my dear Traddles ! ' said 
I. 'I'll begin to-morrow.' 

"Traddles looked astonished, as he well might; but he had 
no notion as yet of my rapturous condition. 

" 'I'll buy a book,' said I, 'with a good scheme of this art 
in it; I'll work at it at the Commons, where I haven't half 



388 MARRIAGE. 

enough to do ; I'll take down the speeches in our court for 
practice — Traddles, ray dear fellow, I'll master it ! ' 

" 'Dear me,' said Traddles, opening his eyes, i I had no idea 
you were such a determined character, Copperfield ! ' 

"I don't know how he should have had, for it was new 
enough to me. * * * * * * 

"I did not allow my resolution, with respect to the Parlia- 
mentary Debates, to cool. It was one of the irons I began to 
heat immediately, and one of the irons I kept hot, and ham- 
mered at, with a perseverance I may honestly admire. I 
bought an approved scheme of the noble art and mystery of 
stenography (which cost me ten and sixpence) ; and plunged 
into a sea of perplexity that brought me in a few weeks., to the 
confines of distraction. The changes that were rung upon dots,, 
which in such a position meant such a thing, and in such 
another position something else, entirely different ; the wonder- 
ful vagaries that were played by circles ; the unaccountable 
consequences that resulted from marks like flies' legs ; the tre- 
mendous effects of a curve in a wrong place ; not only troubled 
my waking hours, but reappeared before me in my sleep. 
When I had groped my way, blindly, through these difficulties, 
and had mastered the alphabet, which was an Egyptian Temple 
in itself, there then appeared a procession of new horrors^ 
called arbitrary characters ; the most despotic characters I have 
ever known ; who insisted, for instance, that a thing ltk# the 
beginning of a cobweb, meant expectation, and that a pen and 
ink sky-rocket stood for disadvantageous. When I had fixed 
these wretches in my mind, I found that they had driven every- 
thing else out of it ; then, beginning again, I forgot them ; 
while I was picking them up, I dropped the other fragments of 
the system ; in short, it was almost heart-breaking. 

"It might have been quite heart-breaking, but for Dora, who 
was the stay and anchor of my tempest-driven bark. Every 
scratch in the scheme was a gnarled oak in the forest of diffi- 



MARRIAGE. 389 

-culty, and I went on cutting them down, one after another, with 
such vigor, that in three or four months I was in a condition to 
make an experiment on one of our crack speakers in the Com- 
mons. Shall I ever forget how the crack speaker walked oil 
from me before I began, and left my imbecile pencil staggering 
•about the paper as if it were in a fit ! * * * 

"I have tamed that savage stenographic mystery. I make a 
respectable income by it. I am in high repute for my accom- 
plishment in all pertaining to the art, and ana joined with eleven 
others in reporting the debates in Parliament for a Morning 
Newspaper. * * * 

"I feel as if it were not for me to record, even though this 
manuscript is intended for no eyes but mine, how hard I worked 
•at that tremendous short-hand, and all improvement appertain- 
ing to it, in my sense of responsibility to Dora and her aunts. I 
will only add, to what I have already written of my persever- 
ance at this time of my life, and of a patient and continuous 
energy, which then began to be matured within me, and which I 
know to be the strong part of my character, if it have any 
strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source 
of my success. I have been very fortunate in worldly matters ; 
many men have worked much harder, and not succeeded half 
■so well: but I never could have done what I have done, without 
the habits of punctuality, order, and dilligence, without the 
determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time, 
no matter how quickly its successor should come upon its heels, 
which I then formed. Heaven knows I write this in no spirit 
•of self-laudation. The man who reviews his own life, as I do 
mine, in going on here, from page to page, had need to have 
been a good man indeed, if he would be spared the sharp con- 
sciousness of many talents neglected, many opportunities 
^wasted, many erratic and perverted feelings constantly at war 
withi'n his breast, and defeating him. I do not hold one natural 
'gift, I dare say, that I have not abused. My meaning simply 



3i)0 MARRIAGE. 

is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all 
my heart to do well ; that whatever I have devoted myself to,. 
I have devoted myself to completely ; that, in great aims and 
in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest. I have 
never believed it possible that any natural or improved ability 
can claim immunity from the companionship of the steady, 
plain, hard-working qualities, and hope to gain its end. There 
is no such thing as such fulfilment on this earth. Some happy 
talent, and some fortunate opportunity, may form the two sides 
of the ladder on which some men mount, but the rounds of 
that ladder must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear ; and 
there is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere 
earnestness. Never to put one hand to anything on which I 
could throw my whole self; and never to affect depreciation of 
my work, whatever it was ; I find, now, to have been my 
golden rules." 

Let me say a few words on doubt. Many an honest-hearted 
young man doubts his own stability of affection. He is sure 
that it is easy enough for him, now, to be very much in love 
with her who, in his eyes, is the fairest in all the world ; but as 
the years go by and children come, and the freshness of youth 
begins to fade a little, — is he sure that he will then feel as he 
now does 1 This is the question that instinctively presents 
itself to him. He has been taught to distrust beauty. 

" He that loves a rosy cheek, 
Or a coral lip admires, 
Or from starlike eyes doth seek 

Fuel to maintain his fires ; 
As old Time makes these decay, 
So his flames must waste away/' 

He has read these lines and supposes them to be oracilar^ 
He has been brought up in the belief that it is right to £0 to 
church on Sunday, and wrong to marry for beauty. Not that 



MARRIAGE. 391 

these precepts are closely allied to each other, but they are 
inculcated with about equal force. He picks up his Shakespeare 
and reads, — 

" What ! is the jay more precious than the lark, 
Because his feathers are more beautiful ? 
Or is the adder better than the eel, 
Because his painted skin contents the eyes ? 
Oh no, good friend : neither art thou the worse 
For this poor furniture and mean array : " — 

and again he is misled by a witness who speaks only a half- 
truth. Plutarch tells him that "love founded upon beauty does 
not last"; and he is constantly running across twaddle about 
"the same spirit in another clay," wherever he may read. 
What wonder that his head accepts what his heart is continually 
denying ? He knows that he does love a rosy cheek and a coral 
lip, that starlike eyes do kindle the fires ; and therefore dis- 
trusts himself, because, forsooth, his head has been taught to dis- 
trust his heart. I ask you to reconsider your opinion ; to con- 
sent to decide the case according to the evidence ; to take up 
your position again in the jury-box, and listen to the witnesses 
I shall summon in rebuttal. 

I first call Rev. Sidney Smith. He says : — " How exquisitely 
absurd, to tell girls that beauty is of no value, dress of no use ! 
Beauty is of no value ; her whole prospects and happiness in life 
may often depend upon a new gown or a becoming bonnet ; and, 
if she has five grains of common sense, she will find this out. 
The great thing is to teach her the just value, and that there 
must be something better under the bonnet than a pretty face, 
for real happiness. But never sacrifice the truth." 

Having called a divine, I next call a poet, John Gr. Whittier. 
Listen to his testimony: "Quite the ugliest face I ever saw was 
that of a woman whom the world calls beautiful. Through its 
' silver veil ' the evil and ungentle passions looked out hideous and 
hateful. On the other hand, there are faces which the multitude 



392 MARRIAGE. 

at the first glance pronounce homely, unattractive, and such as 
'Nature fashions by the gross,' which I always recognize with 
a warm heart-thrill ; not for the world would I have one feature 
changed ; they please me as they are ; they are hallowed by kind 
memories ; they are beautiful through their associations ; nor 
are they any the less welcome that with my admiration of them 
'the stranger intermeddleth not.' " 

Next I call to the stand the Italian scholar, Ficino, as quoted 
by Bronson Alcott. He testifies: "The first Beauty is the 
splendor of the Father of Light, and the figure of his substance. 
Whence there shines forth a threefold radiance. The first, 
through angelic minds; the second, through intellectual souls; 
the third, through beautiful bodies. These reflecting the same 
light as it were through three different glasses of different colors, 
and successively a different splendor from the first." 

Now I call a doctor, and the celebrated Acton responds to his 
name, and tells us : " I have been often asked, 'Shall I (other 
things being equal) marry for beauty? ' I answer, ' Yes, if you 
can get your beauty to accept you. ' Let ugly people talk as 
they may about intellect and the evanescent charms of mere 
outward comeliness, still some degree of beauty is, if not the 
first, certainly the second requisite in most cases, to a happy 
married life. A tolerably large acquaintance with the domestic 
histories of men, in all ranks of life, has shown me that next to 
a good disposition, nothing in a wife is so likely to insure do- 
mestic happiness as good looks, especially if they are of a last- 
ing kind, not mere bloom or prettiness. We all must acknowl- 
edge that good looks are among the best passports in the world. 
Even children, the most unprejudiced witnesses possible, frank- 
ly admit that they like so and so, because she or he has a nice 
face. It is unwise to undervalue, or pretend to undervalue, 
the women's advantages of comeliness of face and form. A 
woman with a good physique starts with advantages that other 
women cannot acquire. * * * Physical attractions, 



MARRIAGE. 393 

again, help to tide over many of those little domestic differ- 
ences which will occur in married life. * * It would be 
a curious inquiry, perhaps worth pursuing, whether, even 
among the lower classes, a cornel y-looking woman was ever 
ill-used by her husband, except when he was drunk. In a state 
of nature we find that animals select the most perfect forms for 
their mates — thus instinctively providing for the perpetuation 
of as perfect a species as possible. It would be well in many 
respects if this example were more closely followed by human 
beings. 

"That I do not exaggerate the importance of bearing these 
and similar considerations in mind in choosing a wife is toler- 
ably self-evident. I may, however, refer those who require an 
authority to the Republic and the New Atlantis, to show what 
minute care Plato and Bacon recommended, in their ideal com- 
monwealths, in the selection of those who were to be mothers 
and nurses of the citizens." He tells us further that he has 
submitted his views to a "clever unmarried woman," who has 
in turn favored him with an opinion. We admit this as evi- 
dence. It reads : — 

"Almost the first thing a girl is told in the nursery is that 
beauty soon fades, and that ugly girls are as much valued as 
handsome ones ; but on tkeir first step over the threshold into 
the world a woman soon discovers the fallacy of this early 
teaching; and I perfectly agree with Sydney femith in his 
remarks upon personal beauty as affecting the destiny of 
women. Comeliness of form and beauty of feature ought not 
to be despised, as they are the gifts of God. 

"Milton represents Eve as the embodiment of female loveli- 
ness. Sarah, the wife of Abraham, was a fair woman to look 
upon ; and Rachel, Jacob's best loved wife, 'was beautiful and 
well favored.' 

"It is, however, very difficult to define in what beauty con- 
sists. It is more a kind of pleasure conveyed to the mind of 



394 MARRIAGE. 

the beholder than any special personal attraction of form or 
figure. All nations and ages agree in worshiping beauty of 
some sort or other. We see it portrayed in pictures and 
statues ; and one of the great reasons for supposing that it is 
considered desirable in the eyes of man is, that where it does 
not exist women frequently try to supply its place by artificial 
means. It is said that Madame de Stael would have given up 
all her fame and renown to have been as beautiful as her friendi 
Madame de Kocca ; and I doubt very much whether we should 1 
have felt the same degree of pity for Mary Queen of Scotts had! 
she been as ugly as her illustrious rival Elizabeth. 

"It is, however, rare to meet with very ugly women. A. 
mere set of features, however beautiful in form, seldom please 
an educated man, unless they are lighted up by good sense and; 
good temper. A man soon gets tired of the pretty child wife. 
After twenty-five the bloom of youth begins to fade, and yet 
what is called heauty often lasts for years ; so that, in a general 
way, it is the mind and morals that in a great measure influence: 
the appearance of women and heighten their attractions in the 
eyes of men ; and however much they may deny it, or try to 
conceal it, yet I believe there is inherent in every woman's 
heart a wish to be pleasing and agreeable to the other sex ; and 
as it is in a great measure the destiny of most women to be 
married, it seems incumbent upon parents to give girls that 
judicious training in early life which will fit them to be good 
wives and mothers ; and there is, I believe, no greater happi- 
ness on earth than is to be found in the married state, where 
two persons of affectionate dispositions, and equals in birth and 
station, agree to pass the rest of their lives together, till, in 
fact, death, and not Lord Penzance, them do part. In the 
higher grades of life beauty is often a binding tie ; in the lowest 
ranks of life Ido not think men deem personal appearance of 
any consequence. Much of the happiness in wedded life 
depends mainly upon the wov\an. She should be the sharer of 



MARRIAGE. 395 

his joys and the comforter in his griefs. She was made for 
him, not he for her ; and her privileges as his companion are 
great and many. Now what kind of woman, in a general way, 
is most capable of heightening his joys and lessening his sor- 
rows? 

" Sir Lytton Bulwer has summed up what a man wants in a 
wife. He wants a companion. i He does not want a singing 
animal, nor a dancing animal, nor a drawing animal, — and yet 
these three last accomplishments have cost many women years 
of painful toil to acquire ; and they often marry a man who 
cannot appreciate any one of them.' After forty, few women 
can sing, and few care to dance. A great proficiency in these 
accomplishments often leads a woman into expensive and 
dangerous society, where her vanity is fed by excessive praise. 

" What a man looks for most in the chosen companion of his 
heart and home is that she should have, added to a pleasing 
exterior, a well cultivated mind. Let her have also the ' mens 
sana %n corpore sano^ good health and good temper ; for what 
we call happiness depends very much upon the temper, and 
state of the digestion, — much more so, I believe, than we are 
generally aware of." * * * * * 

I next call to the witness stand Bronson Alcott, and his tes- 
timony is as follows : — " God is to be considered as beauty, high 
and divine, and whatever is beautiful is part of God. Beauty 
is the essence of all order, the ideal of order. Whatever of 
divine creation diverges from beauty becomes deformed or 
defamed because of its subsequent connections. These deformi- 
ties retained are what we see throughout Nature. Not that 
God necessitates any divergency; but the medium through 
which beauty passes is insufficient, opaque, and, therefore, it is 
not transmitted clear and true. Hence all the deformity in the 
world. He creates in his own image, and nothing but what is 
beautiful. We are first apparent to ourselves as souls. All 
deformitv in the world arises from human arts. Were we not 



"396 MARRIAGE. 

sinners, we should all be handsome. The last Adam and Eve 
will not be like the first, because each generation adds some- 
thing to perfection. * * * * * * We 
are none of us what we wish we were. We have an ideal 
higher than we have attained. We all have peculiarities ot 
form or visage that we know do not belong to us, but by inher- 
itance from a grandparent. Do not we feel as though we were 
deprived of right? If we descended from the pure and lovely 
God, and were made in his image, and it is through our ances- 
try that we share in this deformity, not as God painted us, 
is not this fate? Everybody feels a little wronged if he or she 
is not handsome. Somebody has sinned, and this is the sym- 
bol. That is what we mean by fate, and that fate is worked by 
ourselves. The ill of the world to-day is what it is because of 
our infirmities; our want of harmonious culture; our ignorance 
and whatever else it originates. * * * * 

" Beauty is a fruit of the soul, and manifests itself in the flesh 
in colors, in forms, in gestures, in tones especially, in manners, 
and in all that a person does. The tones of a just and harmo- 
nious soul are all sweet and melodious. If, by any misfortune 
of descent, we inherit organs which do not lend themselves to 
these fine tones, that is the fate which is entailed upon us ; but 
this to a measure can be eradicated by the virtue of the being 
itself. Thus a babe, deformed at birth, may, by virtue of a 
good life, pass from this world in beauty. Many of us have 
been brought in contact with persons whose countenances were 
unhandsome, and yet, when occasion called it forth, a smile of 
angelic sweetness would light up the face. The being had 
made itself ; the casket was inherited. It is in everybody's power 
to shape and mould his features anew." 

Pardon me if I introduce one more witness. Ralph Waldo 
Emerson thinks the subject worthy of extended testimony. 
This is, in part, what he says : " It is a proof of the shallow- 
ness of the doctrine of beauty, as it lies in the minds of our 



MARRIAGE. 397" 

amateurs, that men seem to have lost the perception of the 
instant dependence of form upon soul." "The ancients called 
beauty the flowering of virtue." "Every opirit makes it& 
house ; and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the 
inhabitant. But not less does nature furnish us with every 
sign of grace and goodness. The delicious faces of children, 
the beauty of school-girls, 'the sweet seriousness of sixteen,' 
the lofty air of well-born, well-bred boys, the passionate histo- 
ries in the looks and manners of youth and early manhood, and 
the varied power in all that well-known company that escort us 
through life, — we know how these forms thrill, paralyze, pro- 
voke, inspire, and enlarge us." 

"Beauty is the form under which the intellect prefers to 
study the world. All privilege is that of beauty ; for there are 
many beauties; as, of general nature, of the human face and 
form, of manners, of brain, or method, moral beauty, or beauty 
of the soul." 

"The question of beauty takes us out of surfaces, to thinking 
of the foundations of things. Goethe said, ' The beautiful is a 
manifestation of secret laws of nature, which, but for this 
appearance, had been forever concealed from us.' " "We can 
not approach beauty. Its nature is like opaline doves'-neck 
lustres, hovering and evanescent. Herein it resembles the 
most excellent things, which all have this rainbow character, 
defying all attempts at appropriation and use. What else did 
Jean Paul Richter signify, when he said to music, ' Away ! 
away ! thou speakest to me of things which in all my endless 
life I have not found and shall not find.' " 

' ' I am warned by the ill fate of many philosophers not to 
attempt a definition of Beauty. I will rather enumerate a few 
of its qualities. We ascribe beauty to that which is simple ; 
which has no superfluous parts ; which exactly answers its end ; 
which stands related to all things ; which is the mean of many 
extremes. It is the most enduring quality, and the most 



398 MAREIAGE. 

ascending quality. We say, love is blind, and the figure of 
Cupid is drawn with a bandage round his eyes. Blind ; — yes, 
because he does not see what he does not like ; but the sharp- 
est-sighted hunter in the universe is love, for finding what he 
seeks, and only that ; and the mythologists tell us, that Yulcan 
was painted lame, and Cupid blind, to call attention to the 
fact, that one was all limbs, and the other all eyes. In the true 
mythology, Love is an immortal child, and Beauty leads him 
as a guide ; nor can we express a deeper sense than when we 
say, Beauty is the pilot of the young soul." 

"Beyond their sensuous delight, the forms and colors of 
nature have a new charm for us in our perception, that not one 
ornament was added for ornament, but is a sign of some better 
health or more excellent action. Elegance of form in bird or 
beast, or in the human figure, marks some excellence of struc- 
ture ; or beauty is only an invitation from what belongs to us. 
'Tis a law of botany, that in plants, the same virtues follow the 
same forms. It is a rule of largest application, true in a plant, 
true in a loaf of bread, that in the construction of any fabric or 
organism, any real increase of fitness to its end is an increase 
of beauty." 

' ' The lesson taught by the study of Greek and of Grothic 
art, of antique and of Pre-Raphaelite painting, was worth all 
the research, — namely, that all beauty must be organic ; that 
outside embellishment is deformity. It is the soundness of the 
bones that ultimates itself in a peach-bloom complection : health 
of constitution that makes the sparkle and the power of the 
eye. 'Tis the adjustment of the size and of the joining of the 
sockets of the skeleton, that gives grace of outline and the finer 
grace of movement. The cat and the deer cannot move or sit 
inelegantly. The dancing-master can never teach a badly built 
man to walk well. The tint of the flower proceeds from its 
root, and the lustres of the sea-shell begin with its existence. 
Hence our taste in building rejects paint, and all shifts, and 



MARRIAGE. 399 

shows the original grain of the wood : refuses pilasters and col- 
umns that support nothing, and allows the real supporters of 
the house honestly to show themselves. Every necessary or 
organic action pleases the beholder. A man leading a horse to 
water, a farmer sowing seed, the labors of haymakers in the 
field, the carpenter building a ship, the smith at his forge, or 
whatever useful labor, is becoming to the wise eye. But if it is 
done to be seen, it is mean." "The line of beauty is the 
result of perfect economy." 

"Beauty is the moment of transition, as if the form were 
just ready to flow into other forms. Any fixedness, heaping, 
or concentration on one feature — a long nose, a sharp chin, a 
hump-back — is the reverse of the flowing, and therefore 
deformed. Beautiful as is the symmetry of any form, if the 
form can move, we seek a more excellent symmetry. The 
interruption of equilibrium stimulates the eye to desire the res- 
toration of symmetry, and to watch the steps through which it 
is attained . This is the charm of running water, sea-waves, 
the flight of birds, and the locomotion of animals." "There 
are faces so fluid with expression, so flushed and rippled by the 
play of thought, that we can hardly find what the mere features 
really are. When the delicious beauty of lineaments loses its 
power, it is because a more delicious beauty has appeared ; that 
an interior and durable form has been disclosed. Still, Beauty 
rides on her lion, as before. Still, ' it was for beauty that the 
world was made.' The lives of the Italian artists, who estab- 
lished a despotism of genius amidst the dukes and kings and 
mobs of their stormy epoch, prove how loyal men in all times 
are to a finer brain, a finer method, than their own." "Beauty 
is the quality which makes to endure." 

"The felicities of design in art, or in works of nature, are 
shadows or forerunners of that beauty which reaches its per- 
fection in the human form. All men are its lovers. Wherever 
it goes, it creates joy and hilarity, and everything is permitted 



400 MARRIAGE. 

to it. It reaches its height in woman. 'To Eve,' say the 
Mahometans, ' God gave two-thirds of all beauty. ' A beauti- 
ful woman is a practical poet, taming her savage mate, plant* 
ing tendernees, hope, and eloquence in all whom she approaches. 
Some favors of condition must go with it, since a certain seren- 
ity is essential, but we love its reproofs and superiorities. 
Nature wishes that woman should attract man, yet she often 
cunningly moulds into her face a little sarcasm, which seems to 
say, ' Yes, I am willing to attract, but to attract a little better 
kind of a man than any I yet behold.' French Memoires of the 
fifteenth century celebrate the name of Pauline de Yiguiere, a 
virtuous and accomplished maiden, who so fired the enthusiasm 
of her contemporaries, by her enchanting form, that the citi- 
zens of her native city of Toulouse obtained the aid of the civil 
authorities to compel her to appear publicly on the balcony at 
least twice a week, and, as often as she showed herself, the 
crowd was dangerous to life. Not less, in England, in the last 
century, was the fame of the Gunnings, of whom, Elizabeth 
married the Duke of Hamilton ; and Maria, the Earl of Cov- 
entry. Walpole says, ' The concourse was so great, when the 
Duchess of Hamilton was presented at court, on Friday, that 
even the noble crowd in the drawing-room clambered on chairs 
and tables to look at her. There are mobs at their doors to see 
them get into their chairs, and people go early to get places at 
the theatres, when it is known they will be there.' 'Such 
crowds,' he adds, elsewhere, 'flock to see the Duchess of Ham- 
ilton, that seven hundred people sat up all night, in and about 
an inn, in Yorkshire, to see her get into her post-chaise next 
morning.' " 

" But why need we console ourselves with the fames of Helen 
of Argos, or Corinna, or Pauline of Toulouse, or the Duchess 
of Hamilton ? We all know this magic very well, or can divine 
it. It does not hurt weak eyes to look into beautiful eyes 
never so long. Women stand related to beautiful nature around 



MARRIAGE. 401 

tis, and the enamored youth mixes their form with moon and 
stars, with woods and waters, and the pomp of summer. They 
heal us of awkwardness by their words and looks. We observe 
their intellectual influence on the most serious student. They 
refine and clear his mind ; teach him to put a pleasing method 
into what is dry and difficult. We talk to them, and wish to 
be listened to ; we fear to fatigue them, and acquire a facility of 
expression which passes from conversation into habit of style." 

' ' That Beauty is the normal state is shown by the perpetual 
effort of nature to attain it. Mirabeau had an ugly face on a 
handsome ground; and we see faces every day which have a 
good type, but have been marred in the casting ; a proof that 
we are all entitled to beauty, should have been beautiful, if our 
ancestors had kept the laws, — as every lily and every rose is 
well." 

"A beautiful person, among the Greeks, was thought to betray 
by this sign some secret favor of the immortal gods ; and we can 
pardon pride, when a woman possesses such a figure, that wherever 
she stands, or moves, or leaves a shadow on the wall, or sits for a 
portrait to the artist, she confers a favor on the world. And 
yet— it is not beauty that inspires the deepest passion. Beauty 
without grace is the hook without the bait." " The radiance 
of the human form, though sometimes astonishing, is only a, 
burst of beauty for a few years or a few months, at the perfec- 
tion of youth, and in most, rapidly declines. But we remain 
lovers of it, only transferring our interest to interior excel- 
lence." "All high beauty has a moral element in it, and I 
find the antique sculpture as ethical as Marcus Antoninus ; and 
the beauty ever in proportion to the depth of thought. Gross 
and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure sham- 
bles ; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled 
skin and gray hairs." "And, in chosen men and women, I 
find somewhat in form, speech, and manners which is not of 
their person and family, but of a humane, catholic, and spirit- 

(26) 



402 MARRIAGE. 

ual character, and we love them as the sky. They have a 
largeness of suggestion, and their face and manners carry a cer- 
tain grandeur like time and justice." 

This is what our witnesses testify of beauty. The time we 
have spent in listening to them, has been spent to the best pos- 
sible advantage if we have learned once for all that beauty is 
only the incidental external expression of the internal reality — a 
beautiful heart; that beauty is to be trusted and sought, for it is 
heart speaking to heart ; that though the external, the symbol, 
may, perchance, lose something of its roundness, the reality to 
which the symbol bears witness is becoming daily more lovable 
in the growing fulness of its fadeless bloom. u Beauty is its 
own excuse for being." How can we have grace of body with- 
out grace of mind ? What more does the body than express 
the mind? Take the mind from the body, and beauty and 
loveliness are gone in a moment. 

If it be urged that features which are not beautiful may be 
made, by cast-iron heredity, the outer garment of a beautiful 
life, the answer is that the greater is sure to conquer the less, 
the noble is sure to overcome the base. You would think such 
a wife the handsomest of women; and you would be philo- 
sophically correct in your opinion, though all the outside world 
should laugh. " Plato tells us that Socrates resembled one of 
those misshapen pictures of apes and owls painted on the out- 
side of an apothocary's gallipot; but he adds that although the 
figures were grotesque, the vessel was truly filled with sweet 
balsams." u The celebrated Descartes had for his first love a 
young lady who squinted, and never after could he admire any 
o^e who saw straight. His imagination associated all her 
charms with that peculiar obliquity of vision, and could not 
see them if that were absent." "We love," says Emerson, 
'"any forms, however ugly, from which great qualities shine. 
If command, eloquenee, art, or invention exist in the most 
deformed person, all the accidents that usually displease, please, 



MARRIAGE. • 403 

and raise esteem and wonder higher." Our very lives are 
dependent, every moment, upon the force we call gravity. It 
makes no difference whether we recognize the existence of the 
force or not ; our degree of dependence is not thereby affected 
a single particle. The prattling child and hoary philosopher 
are alike its debtors. In like manner, it makes no difference 
whether or not we recognize the true source of beauty ; the 
ignorant and instructed are both subject to the laws of beauty, 
whose workings are everywhere the same. It is for this reason 
that professional beauties are always so disappointing. So soon as 
beauty puts itself on exhibition, it commits suicide. By the 
simple act its very fountain and source are dried up. A heart 
can no more be flaunted on the stage and stay a heart, than a 
snowflake can fall on a red-hot stove and retain its crystalline 
beauty. And the effect is the same, no matter if the truth be 
not discerned. The result is the same, let the famous beauty 
be paraded under a shabby circus-tent for the delight of the 
rabble, or in front of the foot-lights of a luxurious playhouse 
for the amusement of the wealthy and the cultured. The 
ignorant boor is as dissatisfied as the scholar. The heart can 
never be deceived regarding those things which are especially 
its own. There is a subtle philosophy behind that saying of 
Lavater's that " She neglects her heart, who studies her glass." 
He would have been equally true had he written, She who 
studies her glass, disfigures her face. 

This confusion of beauty with its external expression is well 
illustrated in the varying opinions of poets who have attempted 
to point out in just what woman's chief beauty lies. They 
have made bad work of it . There are before me a few of their 
special deliverances on this point. They may be summed up 
as follows ; — her winning smile, her rosy mouth, her brains, 
her sympathy, her eyes, her grace of mind, her heart, true 
love, "pure woman's love," love and duty, u the sweet word — 
wife," "womanhood with honor." They are all right and all 



401 MARRIAGE. 

wrong. Each is a legitimate part ; no single one the whole. 
Only let us be sure that we are well rid of the doleful mistake- 
of thinking that beauty of person means deformity of charac- 
ter. It is prima facie evidence of a beautiful heart. "Beauty 
is the purgation of superfluities," said Michael Angelo. 

It held an honorable place in the world in the beginning of 
things. How passing fair in his eyes was his wife, is told of 
Abraham in a touching legend. We are informed that "when 
Abraham came to Egypt he shut up Sarah in a box ; but at the 
custom-house the officers asked him to pay duty on his luggage. 
'What is it, wares?' asked they. 'I will pay duty on them/ 
answered Abraham. ' Is it gold?' 'Also on gold,' said he. 
' Is it pearls, then V 'I will pay duty also on pearls,' answered 
Abraham. 'This will never do,' said the officers. 'Open thy 
trunk ! ' As Abraham opened it, the whole land of Egypt was 
lighted up with Sarah's brilliancy ! " And when, many years 
afterward, a prophet was sent to select a king for the nation 
which had sprung from Abraham, though his instructions were, . 
"Look not on his countenance, nor on the height of his stat- 
ure ; because I have refused him : for the Lord seeth not as 
man seeth ; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but 
the Lord looketh on the heart," yet when the chosen one came 
before him, " and the Lord gaid, Arise, anoint him: for this is 
he," it was found that he who had been chosen for his heart, 
"was ruddy, and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly 
to look to. ' ' 

" It is related of Michael Angelo that when some person object- 
ed that he had represented the Yirgin Mary as beautiful when no 
longer young, he replied: 'Do you not see that the beauty of 
her soul has preserved that of her countenance? ' " Beauty of 
person and beauty of spirit cannot be separated the one from 
the other. It was a scientific grouping of things related to 
each other, when the poet wrote, — 



MARRIAGE. 405 

" Her face was like the lily, 
Her heart was like the rose, 
Her eyes were like a heaven 
Where the sunlight always glows." 

How familiar our expression, " The true, the beautiful and the 
good." It is not a hap-hazard phrase, but acknowledges their 
mutual interdependence. The other day a friend expressed, in 
my hearing, dislike for a certain young lady. To the remon- 
strance that he ought not so to speak merely because she was 
not good looking, the answer came quickly, "Yes, but she isn't 
one who makes you forget that she is homely." That is it, 
precisely. The good alone are beautiful. Deceit is ugly and 
misshapen ; truth is the foundation of beauty . You must, 
then, if you would be wise, marry for beauty, for 

" Such perfect friends are Truth and Love, 
That neither lives where both are not." 

Let your head corroborate your heart in its intuition that it is 
wisest, and safest, and best, to love the beautiful soul whose 
windows are the " star-like " eyes ; to love the " ruby lip " and 
"rosy cheek," the Grecian form and graceful mien, which are 
the dim outward expression of the spirit imprisoned within, 
surpassingly fair . So loving you need never fear that you will 
ever reach any time in life when you cannot join with Dean 
Stanley in the words which he penned after the death of his 
wife, and hid away in his own heart until death claimed him 
also: 

' " Till Death us part.' 

So speaks the heart, 
When each to each repeats the words of doom ; 

Through blessing and through curse, 

For better and for worse, 
We will be one, till that dread hour shall come. 



4:06 MARRIAGE. 

" Life, with its myriad grasp, 

Our yearning souls shall clasp, 
By ceaseless love and still expectant wonder ; 

In bonds that shall endure, 

Indissolubly sure, 
Till God in death shall part our paths asunder. 

" Till death us join. 

O voice yet more divine ! 
That to the broken heart breathes hope sublime. 

Through lonely hours 

And shattered powers 
We still are one, despite of change and time. 

" Death, with his healing hand, 

Shall once more knit the band 
Which needs but that one link which none may sever ; 

Till, through the Only Good, 

Heard, felt, and understood, 
Our life in God shall make us one forever/' 

If you have been loyal to beauty, another promise of undi* 
minished love and happiness in future years has come with it. 
For health and beauty belong together. It ought not to be 
necessary for me to remind you that she who is to be your wife 
should possess a fair degree of health. And it is very easy to 
keep right on loving one who keeps right on being full of life. 
Look at the ideal of womanly beauty as found in classic paint- 
ing and sculpture, and remember that nature does not counte- 
nance shams nor display any but truthful signs, and you will 
understand why it should be so when I tell you that you will 
find the beautiful and tlie healthful going hand in hand. 

"But," says somebody, "the beautiful one whom to call my 
own would be almost too good to be true, would never marry 
me." If you trust to your money, your education, your position, 
your good looks, your good clothes, your conversational bril- 
liancy, probably not. If you make any of these a cloak to- 
hide an unworthy heart — your real self being unworthy — I hope 
she may refuse you. But if a really noble heart betrays itself 



MARRIAGE. 407 

through untoward outward circumstances, you need not fear. 
Benjamin Franklin advised that courting be done in one's every- 
day clothes. And I have yet to know of any young man of honest 
heart, who was not wonderfully surprised when his fair lady 
yielded to his suit. You know the French proverb — " It is the 
unexpected that happens." "I very well remember," says 
Dr. Holland, " the reply which a gentleman who happened to 
combine the qualities of wit and common sense, made to a young 
man who expressed a fear that a certain young lady of great 
beauty and attainments would dismiss him, if he should become 
serious. 'My friend, 5 said the wit, 'infinitely more beautiful 
and accomplished women than she is, have married infinitely 
uglier and meaner men than you are.'" Any man who, in 
anything, strives for aught but his highest ideal, suffers a meas- 
ure of degradation in yielding to such cowardice. You cannot 
honestly win the heart of any girl who does not fill your highest 
conception. With true courage set out with the determination 
to gain her who is your beau ideal, or live a bachelor. There 
will be small danger of your being driven to the latter alterna- 
tive. 

Do you say, " I have no exact idea as yet, what are the rules 
for safe wife-choosing? " Well, a great many have been formu- 
lated. One of the best is that u a good daughter and sister 
always makes a good wife," I once heard a shrewd old man 
say, " Young men, let me tell you if you have any questions to 
pop, pop 'em to a tomboy romp ! " Such maxims as these put 
a certain aspect of the case, forcibly; still they are but half- 
truths. There is but one rule of safety which is comprehen- 
sive, and free from exceptions. There is a homely adage that 
"it takes a thief to catch a thief." It is equally true that it 
takes a heart to know a heart. There is small d anger that the 
needle of a compass will be diverted by a piece of wood, mis- 
taking it for true steel. If you will give yourself no rest until 
yours is a straightforward, honest heart, there is small possi- 



408 MAKHIAG-E. 

bility that it will be unable to distinguish its kind. Therefore 
you have no right to talk about the risks of marriage. "I 
declare," said a young man to a clergyman of my acquaintance, 
" I don't know about marrying, after all; there are so many 
risks — it is so easy to be misled ! " u Well," came the quick 
response, " certainly the girl stands fully as good a chance of 
being fooled, as yourself! " 

Though honesty of heart makes for a thorough acquaintance 
with each other, yet after you have been married awhile you 
will find that you did not know your wife nearly so well as 
you had supposed. It was Ben Johnson, I believe, who said that it 
made small difference whom a man married, for he was sure to 
wake up the next morning and find that it was some one else. 
You will wake up to find that she is some one else in her self- 
sacrificing love for you ; in her eagerness to do the uninterest- 
ing things of housekeeping, because for you ; in her interest in 
your business plans, and economies for the sake of your success ; 
in a thousand and one directions where you had not expected 
her to be thoughtful or painstaking. And it is not impossible 
that you may somewhere find something which seems like a 
very little fault. Do not let it disturb you. Do not expect 
perfection in your wife, for to be your wife at all she must have 
one conspicuous foible, — that of thinking you the best man in 
all the world. Don't expect perfection in your wife, and again 
the unexpected will happen, and you w&ll be amazed at the bud- 
ding perfections on every hand. Do not make the blunder so 
often made, and live together for years as husband and wife, 
and yet never really get acquainted with her, keeping her a 
stranger to yourself. Be so frank and open-hearted that she 
may know you. Find a way to show her your heart — it is just 
what she has been waiting for so that she could give her heart 
to you. Now for the first time do you gain acquaintance 
with each other. Do not wait for any outward circumstance to 
do this work for you. Nothing of the sort can do it. It is 



MARRIAGKE. 409 

often said that a man and his wife begin to get pretty well 
acquainted with each other about the time children begin to 
come into the household. Not necessarily. I know husbands 
and wives to whom children were long since given, who are yet 
total strangers to each other. That was a shrewd procedure of 
the law in ancient Zurich. "When a quarrelsome couple 
applied for a divorce, the magistrate refused to listen to them 
at first. He ordered that they should be shut up together in 
one room for three days, with one bed, one table, one plate, and 
one cup. Their food was passed in by attendants, who neither 
saw nor spoke to them. On the expiration of the three days, it 
was usual to find that neither of them wanted a separation." 

You ought to have the best wife in all the world. Nor does 
this imply that you must out-wit all the rest of the world if you 
get her. By no means. Those young people who are so sure 
that they have just the one, are doubtless right. The best wife in 
all the world, for you, may be had without the defrauding of 
any man. The best possible wife is the one who is best 
adapted to you, who best fills your eye and your heart. And 
herein lies the certainty that your wife will be more to your 
liking next year, than this ; until you grow quite indispensable to 
each other; seeing which certain ones of withered heart take it 
to be but a weak self-deception, for their foolish hearts are capa- 
ble neither of the experience nor the appreciation of what is so 
far above them. It is this intertwining of the two lives which 
makes it impossible for them to entertain comparisons. The 
husband sees no other women which by any possibility can sug- 
gest a comparison with his wife. Not that he underrates them, 
or has lost a just perception. Some woman may cross his path 
who has more regular features, or readier wit ; but his affections 
feel no temptation to wander. We are not units, but individ- 
uals. And it is scientifically true that there is no beauty of 
form or intellect which can come into competition with that 



410 ' MARRIAGE. 

which, for a longer or shorter time, has been growing into that, 
which best meets the hunger of his individual life. 

80 it is not a race to decide who shall get the best or hand- 
somest female, — each may have the most beautiful wife. But 
this puts the burden of choice upon your shoulders. Friends 
and relatives cannot tell who would be your most beautiful wife, 
for the simple reason that they are not yourself. They cannot 
single her out. Listen patiently, needfully, to their advice — 
and then choose for yourself. Do not let them dictate your 
choice. It will be a miracle if it do not bring you into distress. 
For to outrage your heart is ruinous above all things else. It 
will make you heart-blmd. It will befog all your bearings. To 
repair the damage will take years of patient honesty. When 
your heart lias once chosen, make it once for all, and maintain 
it against all the world, even as it was from all the world. 

Love finds employment in the simple luxury of loving. It 
finds expression in doing for the one loved. Therefore it reaches 
its greatest enjoyment in, not hugging itself, but in giving 
delight to its object. Is there any good reason, then, why you 
should not give yourself the constant happiness of telling, and 
showing by deeds, your love to your wife ? Do not be so stupid, 
as a great many people you know, and live on the "take it for 
granted" principle. When it must be taken that way, it is 
generally not taken at all. The u golden mean" is a perilous 
thing anywhere and in anything. Don't try to set your feet in any 
such slippery places. Get just as far to the other extreme as 
possible ; you only make safety more safe. I know one hus- 
band who insists on getting his little wife into his lap even when 
others are about, and she seems to nestle there as if it were no 
unaccustomed place ; and for the life of me I cannot summon 
any valid objection. For, after all, he who u pretends to laugh 
at love, is like the child who sings at night when he is afraid." 
But, Oh ! the homes where one would like to introduce that, to 
them, strange custom ! It would be revolutionary ; but it 



MARRIAGE. 411 

would be a demonstration of the divine right of revolution. 
Be, then, demonstrative toward the wife. You cannot be any- 
thing else and be otherwise than mean. I clip these rules from 
a passing story in one of our newspapers. They are worthy to 
be committed to memory by every one who has, or hopes to 
have, a wife. 

Rules for the Husband. 



Husband, Love Your Wife. 

1. Never find fault with her before others. 

2. Per contra, remember the counsel of the 
Good Booh : Her husband shall praise her 
in the gates ; that is, before folks. 

3. Bear all her burdens for her ; even then 
she'll bear more than you do, in spite of you. 

Jf. If you want her to submit to your 
judgment, never ash her to submit to youv 
selfishness. 

5. A woman's life is made up of little 
things. Mahe her life happy by little courte- 
sies. 

6. Love is a wife's only wages. Don't 
scrimp in your pay. 

"Kejoice with the wife ot thy youth. Be thou ravished 
always with her love," is the Scripture's direction for right 
living. When we hear even the profligate Byron exclaiming 
with his last breath, "Augusta! Ada ! — my sister! my child ! v 
it should make us ashamed of ourselves for ever fearing that 
family ties might one day become loosened from around our 
hearts ; for doubting the stability of our love, 



^412 MARRIAGE. 

"Love is forever and divinely new — 
As young as when the first heart learned to beat, 
As strong, as tender, and as wildly sweet. 
The immortal part of us, the crown of few. 
Out of the savage lust of life it grew, 
As a soft flower groweth out of light and heat. 
A spirit of Are that time could not defeat 
Which made the antique world it overthrew." 

u Every promise of the soul has its fulfilment." The hopes 
and promises which marriage holds out to the young soul will 
not fail of their abundant fulfilling. You may not be able to 
see just how it shall be, but the shall be is not dependent upon 
your imperfect perception. Eye hath not seen nor ear heard 
the joy that awaits every soul which, by the warmth and light 
of the true, the beautiful and the good, is tempted into a growth 
and unfolding like that of the timid buds of spring. You will 
never be able to understand, save by experience only, how royally 
the promises are redeemed, and the hopes realized, which were 
held out to the soul as the reward of home-building. 

"In every man who lives a true life the affections grow con- 
tinually. He began with his mother and his nurse, and jour- 
neyed ever on, pitching his tent each night a day's march 
nearer God. His own children helped him love others yet 
more; his children's children carried the old man's heart quite 
out beyond the bounds of kin and country, and taught him to 
love mankind. He grows old in learning to love, and now, 
when age sets the silver diadem upon his brow, not only is his 
love of truth and justice greater than before, — not only does he 
love his wife better than in his hour of prime, when manly 
instinct added passion to his heart, — not only does he love his 
children more than in their infancy, when the fatherly instinct 
first began its work, — not only has he more spontaneous love 
for his grandchildren than he felt for his first new-born babe, — 
but his mature affection travels beyond his wife, and child, and 
children's child, to the whole family of men, mourns in their 



MARRIAGE. 41 & 

grief, and joys in their delight. All his powers have been 
greatened in his long, industrious, and normal life, and so his 
power of love has continually enlarged . The human objects 
do not wholly satisfy his heart's desire. The ideal of love is 
nowhere actual in the world of men, no finite person fills up the 
hungry heart, so he turns to the Infinite Object of affection, his 
heart turns to the affection of the great Mother of mankind ; 
and in the sentiment of love he and his God are one. God's 
thought in his mind, God's justice in his conscience, God's love 
in his heart, — why should not he be blessed? " * 

There are other considerations touching the question of mar- 
riage which the most ordinary prudence must take into account. 
First comes that of money. What income must be obtained 
before it will be safe — safe in dollars and cents — for me to 
marry ? Of just how many dollars per year must I be sure, 
before it will be safe for me to attempt the founding of a home \ 
Not to ask these questions would be to confess entire absence 
of even a rudimentary common sense. Yet the great majority 
of young men fix a standard altogether too high, thus need- 
lessly, and unwisely, delaying their life plans. Full of the 
true courage of living was that reply of the young man, told 
recently in my hearing. His plans for marriage had been shat- 
tered by the breaking of the engagement. "But," said a con- 
doling friend, "do you really think you can support a wife? " 
"That is not the question at all," was the quick reply. " The 
question is, can she and 1 together run the machine?" That 
reply has the true ring. It makes us sure that they could. It 
is useless to try to make this thing sure beyond possibility of 
accident. This world knows no such security. Even banks 
will break. "Trust in Providence and keep your powder dry," 
is the only practicable rule of action in this matter. It would 
be impious to do either to the neglect of the other. 

But our ideas of the added expense over that of single life, 

* Theodore Parker. 



414 MARRIAGE. 

necessary to the setting up of a home, are woefully exaggerated. 
That versatile Frenchman, Michelet, in speaking of a wife as 
rescuing one from "the servitude of money," continues, 
"Receive for a truth this exact mathematical maxim: — Two 
'persons spend less than one. 

" I see many bachelors who remain such from sheer fright at 
the expensiveness of matrimony, and yet spend infinitely more 
than a married man after all. They live very dearly at the 
cafes and restaurants, and at the theaters. Havana cigars, 
smoked all day, are to their solitude an extravagant necessity. 

"Why do they smoke? 'To forget,' they say. Nothing 
can be more disastrous. We should never forget. Woe to 
him who forgets evils, for he never seeks their antidotes. The 
man, the citizen who forgets, ruins not only himself but his 
country. A blessed thing is it to have by your hearth-stone 
a reliable and loving woman, to whom you can open your heart, 
with whom you can suffer. She will prevent you from either 
dreaming or forgetting. We must all suffer, and love, and 
think. In that is the true life of man. Some men call them- 
selves bachelors. But are they really so ? I have long sought, 
but I have not yet found that mythical being. I have dis- 
covered that everybody is married ; some by temporary mar- 
riages only, it is true, — secret and shameful these, lasting some- 
times for months, sometimes for a week, and often only for an 
hour. These marriages of hourly duration, which are the utter 
degradation of the woman, are not effected at a less cost to the 
man. It is easier to feed a whale than a Dame aux Camellias. 

"If the wife has no female friends whose rivalry incites her 
to extravagance in dress, she spends almost nothing. She 
reduces all your expenses to such a degree that the formula 
given above is no Jonger correct. We must not say ' two per- 
sons, ' but 'four persons spend less than one. ' She supports 
the two children besides." 

The italics are his own. I reproduce them as necessary to 



MARRIAGE. 415 

the faithfulness of the quotation, not because I wish to endorse 
an exact interpretation of his propositions. I do not think thej 
will bear a strictly literal construction ; neither do I like the 
manner in which he classes all single men as libertines, 
•even though he write for France only. But no people contend 
with the French for the reputation they have won in economics 
— they are the acknowledged masters of economy — and the 
general idea running through the passage quoted will bear the 
test of actual experiment. It is undoubtedly true that, with 
rare exceptions, young men lay up nothing until after they are 
married, or are planning to be married in the immediate future. 
I do not forget that much is expected nowadays, of the young 
couple, regarding the style they affect in setting up their home. 
But 

" Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth ! 
Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth !" 

" Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule i 
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of the fool !" 

Is it an unworthy task to set a brave example of home-found- 
ing in exact proportion to one's means I Is it not high time for 
young men and women to get over the notion that they must 
begin life just where their fathers and mothers left off % " The 
love which brings the two together and which should bind 
them together, requires only a comfortable home of respectable 
appearance. Young married people should begin like young 
married people ; it is more orderly and more conducive to the 
welfare and true happiness of each that, as time passes on, 
they build up their fortunes together, each helping the other 
— thus affording new charms that no other course will or can 
yield."* 

I fancy that if the Pilgrim Fathers had waited to found a 
colony until they could build the Boston of to-day, and the 
Dutch had refused to drop anchor in the Hudson until they could 

*Dr. H. N. Guernsey in Plain Talks on Avoided Subjects. 



416 MARRIAGE. 

cover Manhattan Island with the vast city of the present, and 
William Penn had declined to lay out a town which should be 
anything less than our Quaker City, the home of earth's great- 
est nation would to-day be but a howling wilderness. Begin 
housekeeping iu a single room if necessary, but begin. Will- 
ing hands and average health are sure to earn a living. 

I have said nothing about boarding, or about living under the 
parental ro<f instead of setting up your own home, — neither 
have I advised you not to live on candy, and to go in when it 
rains. It would be absurd to waste time on such things. It 
can hardly be necessary to warn you against the dishonesty and 
danger of attempting the solution of the monetary problem by 
the wedding of a wealthy wife. It is the killing of two birds 
with one stone, with a vengeance. One of the birds may be 
very much of a dove, and the killing cruel. The other is sure 
to be a cross between a hawk and a goose, and the killing mer- 
ited. If the wealth comes unsought, accept it as an element of 
risk introduced which cannot shake your purpose, but never 
seek it. It is dangerous because it is a perpetual challenge of 
your natural position as head of the household ; the abdication 
of which position brings unhappiness to the wife as well as to 
the husband. For she finds joy and peace in that husband 
whose clear head and stout arm form a real bulwark between 
her and the rude jostlings of the outer world. Says Michelet, 
" Twelve years ago, I set up this axiom, which every day- 
acquires additional verification. ' If you wish to ruin yourself, 
marry a rich wife.' " 

The dishonesty of seeking money in this way needs no com- 
ment. A prominent divine, writing of this hateful thing, does 
so under the heading, "Marriage as a Crime." Writing from 
the woman's standpoint — is not the guilt equal, no matter which 
may be the sinner? — Louise Chandler Moulton affirms, " The 
woman who deliberately marries for money has something to 
boast over her ' unclassed ' sisters of the demi-monde in pro- 



MARRIAGE. 417 

priety, but little in principle." In all probability your wife's 
father will be a man worth more money than yourself; it is 
natural that it should be so, for he has been at work longer than 
have you, and has beside had a wife to help him take care of what 
he earned, which is no small advantage. But this does not by any 
means imply that you will be denied the privilege of paddling 
your own canoe ; and do not indulge any mistaken fear that to 
ask the daughter of a favored home to share with you a less 
luxurious residence, is making a request involving a self-sacrifice 
which you ought not to ask. If she loves you the humbler home 
will be the brighter ; the best your love can afford, grander 
than the king's palace. 

The genial pen of Robert J. Burdette was never set to truer 
words than when it wrote the following reasons why Tele- 
machus should get married : — 

u Gret married, my boy? Telemachus, come up close and 
look me right in the eye, and listen to me with both ears. Get 
married. If you never do another thing in the world, marry. 
You can't afford it? Your father married on a smaller salary 
than you are getting now, my boy, and he has eight children, 
doesn't have to work very hard, and every year he pays a great, 
pile of your little bills that your salary won't cover. And; 
your father was just as good a man at your age as you are now. 
Certainly, you can afford to marry. You can't afford not to. 
No. I'm not going to quote that tiresome old saying that what 
will keep one person will keep two, because it won't. A thous- 
and dollar salary won't keep two one thousand dollar people ; 
but it will keep two five hundred dollar people nicely, and that's 
all you are, just now, my boy. You need not wince or get 
angry . Let me tell you, a young man who rates in the world as a 
five hundred dollar man, all the year round, Monday as well as 
Saturday; the day after Christmas just as well as the day 
before ; the fifth of July as well as the third, he is going 

(27) 



418 MARRIAGE. 

to rate higher every year, until he is a partner almost before he 
hoped to be a bookkeeper. Good, reliable five hundred dollar 
young men are not such a drug in the market as you suppose. 
You marry, and your wife will bring tact, and love, and skill, 
and domestic genius, and womanly economy that will early 
double your salary. But you would have to deny yourself 
many little luxuries and liberties? Certainly you would; or, 
rather, you'd willingly give them up for greater luxuries. And 
you don't want to shoulder the burdens and cares of married 
life ? I see you do not. And I see what you do not realize, 
perhaps, that all your objections to marriage are mean and sel- 
fish. You haven't given one manly reason for not marrying. 
If you do marry, you are going into a world of new cares, new 
troubles, new embarrassments. You are going to be careful 
and worried about many things. You are going to be tormented 
with household cares and perplexities, all new and untried to 
you. You are going to be pestered and bothered and troubled. 
You will have to walk the floor, with ten pounds of baby and a 
barrelful of colic, when you are nearly crazy for sleep. You 
vrill have to tell stories to the children when you want to read. 
You will have to mend a toy for young Tom, when you ought 
to be writing letters. You will have to stay at home in the 
evening, when you used to go to the club. The baby will rum- 
ple your necktie and the other children will trample into your 
lap with their dusty shoes. Your wife will have so much to do, 
looking after the comfort of her husband and children, that she 
won't be able to sing and play for you every evening, as your 
sweetheart did. Your time will not be your own, and you will 
have less leisure and freedom for fishing and shooting excur- 
sions, camps in the mountains and yachting trips along the 
coast than your bachelor friends of your own age. I admit all this. 
Eut, then, you will be learning self-denial ; you will be living 
for some one else ; you will be loving some one better than you 



MARRIAGE. 41 9 

love yourself, and more than a thousand fold that compensates 
for all that you give up . 

" Why, you want to remain single now, my boy, just because 
you are selfish. And the longer you remain single the more 
this selfishness will grow upon you. There are some noble 
exceptions among bachelors, I know, and some mean ones 
among married men ; and a selfish married man needs killing 
more than any other man I know ; but, as a rule, just look 
around your own friends and see who are the unselfish men. 
"Who is it that gives up his seat in a street-car to a woman — 
not a pretty young girl, but a homely wrinkled woman in 
shabby dress? Who is it heads the charity subscriptions? 
Who pays the largest pew rent ? Who feeds the beggar ? Who 
finds work for the tramp ? Who are the men foremost in unsel- 
fish work ? I know your young bachelor friends are not stingy ! 
Oh, no ! I know Jack Fastboy paid $570 last week for a new 
buggy ; it is light as a match-box, and has such a narrow seat 
that he never can ask a friend to ride with him ; and at the 
same time, Dick Slocum, who married your sister Alice, iive 
years ago, gave $250 for the cyclone sufferers. I think the 
angels laughed all that afternoon, my boy ; but I don't think it 
was because Jack paid $570 for his new buggy. If you want 
to shirk the responsibilities of life, my dear boy, you may ; if 
you want to live forty or fifty years longer, with no one under 
the heavens to think about, or care for, or plau for but yourself, 
go ahead and do it. You will be the only loser. The world 
won't miss you nearly so much as you will miss the world. You 
will have a mean, lonely, selfish, easy time, and, unless you are 
a rare exception to your class, little children will hate you, and 
the gods never yet loved any man whom the children disliked." 

Eor need you worry about the wedding trip. When you 
have brought yourself to the sensible conclusion that you cannot 
afford to deprive yourself of ten years of married happiness 
merely to gratify the foolish notion that you must have a home 



420 MARRIAGE. 

in equal style with some friend who has more money than have 
you, it would be foolish to insist upon having just the same sort 
of wedding tour that he had, anyway. If you have delayed 
until this time some trip which you have fairly earned, which is 
not, for you, an unwarrantable extravagance, and which is to 
furaish your mind and broaden your horizen, by all means take 
it. Home entanglements and business cares will make it more 
difficult to get away a few years hence. But if you imagine 
that in so doing you and your wife are getting more solid satis- 
faction out of each other's society than if you were by some 
little lake, with woods and fields and all out-doors at your com- 
mand ; camping out perhaps, or under some hospitable roof of 
humble pretension where you could not if you would find 
opportunity to spend more than a few dollars a week,— if you 
suppose that there is more enjoyment in the trip of steam and 
style, than in a sojourn close to nature's heart, you make a very 
common, and a very stupid blunder. To mingle in the swift 
current of humanity's restless, artificial tide, costs money. The 
beauty and wisdom in stump, and stone, and flower, and tree, in 
the finny life below the water's surface, and the feathered life 
above your head, are without money and without price. In 
their presence the impudent purse hides its head in shame and 
confusion at its own impotence. 

At all events, do not put the savings of a year, which by 
right should go to make the home attractive, into a feverish 
trip of a few weeks. Both you and your wife need rest and 
quiet after the busy hours and many excitements which culmi- 
nated in the wedding. See that you get it, be thoughtful of 
her and see that she gets it, whether the first days be spent on 
an express train, by the side of a babbling brook, or within the 
charmed precincts of your own home. And now that you have 
done the brave and noble thing of marrying on the strength of 
love and faith and work, rather than money, shun the mistake 
which sometimes steals the honor from such action. Do not 



MARRIAGE. 421 

put off jour happiness. Do you understand ? What I mean 
is this. Do not say to yourself, Well, now we are married; 
and we'll get along pretty comfortably until we can afford to live 
in such-and-such a house and have so-and-so, and then we'll have a 
splendid good time. My dear fellow, that is the sort of time 
you ought to have just now. Don't spoil it all by saying that. 
If you don't have just that sort of a time now, you never 
will have it. You won't know how; and you will make a 
ridiculous spectacle of yourself trying to have it. You ought 
to be happier one, five, ten years from now, than you are now, 
because you will have grown more and more into each other's 
hearts. Bat money, and the style of living will have nothing 
to do with it. And if you put off being your very happiest, it 
will be like the boy who won't go to school just yet. The 
chances are altogether on the side of perpetual ignorance ; and 
if he prove the fortunate exception, at best he will begin at 
twenty-five just where he should have been at fifteen. Don't 
wait for anything. Be your happiest to-day. "He travels 
safe and not unpleasantly, who is guarded by poverty and guided 
by love," said Sir Philip Sidney. "And all ye young hearts," 
says Prof. Swing, "who are just entering upon this great 
debate about pleasure, where it is to be found, do not fall into 
the error that when you become rich then you will- try to be 
happy. Happiness is the most accommodating of all things. 
It will come to a cottage as soon as to a palace. You need never 
wait for any outward pomp to come. As the sunshine of the 
Almighty will shine through a simple vine as richly as upon 
the velvet of a king or upon the gilded dome of a temple, so 
happiness falls with equal sweetness upon all whose minds 
are at peace and in whose hearts flow the good thoughts and 
.good sentiments of life. Never for a moment admit that any 
millionaire or king can surpass you in the possession of that 
peace of mind and smile of existence which we call happiness. 
Here you are equal to the highest." 



422 MARRIAGE. 

Just one word more about money. Do you wish your wife 
to keep her fair face, unmarred by the wrinkled paths of care 
and friction ? Yes. Do you want the plump, round form to 
stay so ? Yes. Do you want the freshness of youth to abide 
with her in all its beauty ? Yes. Do you want her ever to 
bless the day when she gave her heart and hand to you ? Yes ; 
why do you ask such questions, and what has all this to do 
with money? Because your wife's health and happiness depend 
upon money. But you have just said that happiness does not 
depend upon money. By no means. It does not depend upon 
the amount of money. In the words of Micawber, "Annual 
income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen ought and 
six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual 
expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery." 
How is it with your wife since she has been your wife ? It does 
not matter that you provide house, and table, and tickets to the 
lectures, and pew rent. No one can live in this world and be 
other than a savage — least of all can any one be such a perfect 
pattern as is your wife — and have no other uses for money. 
Apply Micawber' s test. Is her " annual income" " ought," 
and her "annual expenditure" "six"? Too pitiful to reach 
pounds at all, the principle remains the same, and the result is 
still "misery." And misery means fret, worry, friction, ill- 
health, fading, unhappiness. 

Ah but, you say, I give her all the money she wants. My 
dear boy, you are not a fool, and don't pretend to be one. 
That is not income, that is alms. She bears faithfully her share 
of the daily toil and care just as truly and really as do you. 
What are her earnings, what does she make ? Nothing. You 
"give " her money when she needs it. Indeed. And pocket 
her earnings meanwhile. Aren't you just a little ashamed? 
But then you just "handle the money as a matter of con- 
venience." Whose convenience? Certainly it is her incon- 
venience. Of course you respond liberally, without question, 



MARRIAGE. 423 

when she suggests a want. I am intimately acquainted with a 
couple who are happy and devoted. The husband provides for 
his family liberally. "Well," says the wife hesitatingly, "I 
shall have to have some money to-day." " How much, Pet ? " 
he replies with the utmost readiness. " Well," still with hesi- 
tancy, " Jamie must have some new stockings, and then there is 
that lining, and" — "Well, but why don't you tell me how 
much % It's all right of course. How much do you want ? " 
"I guess it will be as much as two dollars." He tosses twice 
that in her lap (he is one of the best of husbands), and goes out 
of the gate saying to his friend, * £ I declare, she acts as if I 
didn't want to give it to her! " And he will never see the rea- 
son; and she, poor thing, will never understand that things are 
not just as they should be. It is so easy to be blind. Let the 
wives have the same independent monetary existence that the 
husbands have, and two-thirds of them will be out of the doc- 
tor's hands in six weeks. You don't understand it % If you had 
to ask money of her for the barber, for the cigars, for the news- 
papers, for your railway fare, for your clothes, for everything, 
you would be down sick in a month. Put any human beings, 
men or women, where they can earn nothing — are given every- 
thing — and none of them will be thoroughly well for a single 
week. You make your wife a bankrupt. And bankruptcy 
strangles elasticity and murders health. When Northern Pacific 
goes down, Yillard falls into the hands of the doctors. See to 
it that your wife has an income ; not a charitable allowance, but 
one to which she feels she has a right because she has earned it, 
one which is hers by the same right that yours is yours ; and one 
the disbursement of which is not necessarily to run the gauntlet 
of your approval, any more than you feel under obligation to 
have her audit and approve every expenditure of your own. 

Dr. Dio Lewis published some months ago, in the New York 
Independent, the story of one wife ; and it tells the story so 
truthfully, tells a story which almost always remains untold, 



424 MARRIAGE. 

because, in this instance, there was a miraculous deliverance; 
tells it with such fidelity to the pathos which fills the lives of 
many wives which we meet daily in our social contact, that I 
repeat it here. 

"For three years Mrs. — — had been a sad, nervous invalid, 
when by the death of an uncle she came into possession of 
bonds which yielded an annual income of $3,000. At once her 
health began to improve, she walked erect, and her face became 
radiant. Since her marriage she had become a beggar ; and 
beggars are not strong in health, noble in bearing, or happy 
in face. Her husband was rich, and a good man ; but 'careful ' 
about his money. He never parted with a dollar if he could 
possibly keep it. Their house was handsome and their table 
good ; but while Dora, the servant, who dressed quite as well 

as her mistress, was not obliged to beg for money, Mrs. 

could not get a dollar for personal expenses without explaining, 
urging — in brief, begging. 

" Yisiting her mother in another state she related, with many 
tears, the following story: 'I needed a warm dress in the 
Autumn ; but so great was my repugnance to asking John for 
the means that I put it off till midwinter. One evening we had 
company, and John was delighted with their praise of my sing- 
ing. After we had retired, and he had spoken very warmly of 
my success in entertaining our friends, I thought the moment 
auspicious, and in the most gentle way mentioned the needed 
dress. John was silent for some minutes, and then said : 

"'Why, my darling, I thought you were the best dressed 
woman among them. Don't you think, dearest, it's a foolish 
thing to go on adding dress after dress, when your closet is so 
full that you can hardly get into it ? If you will take my 
advice, I should say wear out some of the dresses you already 
have.' 

u Not another word was spoken by either of us. I did not 
chose to tell him that the dress I had worn that evening was 



MARRIAGE. 425 

my only handsome silk, and that my only warm woolen dress 
was worn out. I could not sleep, and before morning resolved, 
come what might, I would never beg again. That vow I have 
kept. During two years I have had no additions to my ward- 
robe, except the woolen dress you sent to me. Not one word 
has passed between my husband and self on the subject. Oh ! 
how often I think of the sweet independence of my life as a 
music teacher. When I gave myself to John it was easy to 
make me happy. I asked but little, and you know, mother, I 
never shrink from care and labor. But now that dear Uncle 
Eben's bonds give me the the means to clothe myself, and assist 
my nieces as I used to, I shall forgive, forget, and be happy 
again. John is urging me to transfer the bonds to him, and 
let him take care of them for me." 

" My daughter, will you do it ? " 

"Why, Mother, I have kissed those dear, dirty, beautiful, 
old yellow bonds again and again, because they have made it 
possible for me to become a happy and loving wife. I tremble 
when I think how near I came to hating my husband. I shall 
keep the bonds in my own hands. They are really and truly 
the only bonds that bind me to life." 

As to children and the reproductive act and instinct, I would 
speak very plainly and in all kindliness of spirit. Those who 
would do right make so many and egregious blunders just here, 
and thereby miss so much happiness, and make so much mis- 
ery for themselves, that my heart grows pitiful as I write, and 
it seems as if I were talking to little children crying in the 
dark. I want you to think of these things as gifts from the 
hand of the Creator. Who gave you the sense of taste which 
makes the eating of your daily bread a pleasure ? Who gave 
you an eye which would picture the tints of the sunset and the 
coloring of the landscape ? Who painted the flowers and gave 
them perfume ? Who gave us the divine attribute of parentage, 
and who made procreation the highest physical delight ? I pro- 



426 MARRIAGE. 

test that He who conferred parentage upon us, who fashioned 
artery and vein and nerve and erectile tissue, who devised the 
reproductive mechanism and ordained that man should be born 
of woman, is not honored by the attitude of our homes on thia 
subject. How many seem to think they are " doing God serv- 
vice " when they scorn and spurn and deride and pour sarcasm 
upon the reproductive function ! It may not be in words — the 
things unsaid and gathering the impetus of years bear a stronger 
testimony than words ever carried with them. Is the sexual 
appetite from heaven or from hell ? Shall we make a distinc- 
tion with a difference between a brothel and a home ? Or shall 
we, by the force of our unconscious influence, teach our children 
that the difference between the two is but an arbitrary mandate 
of society ? To so bring up children is little less than wicked. 
The baleful consequences are two. First, you have brought the 
sacred so near the boundary of the illegitimate that you have 
no right to be surprised if your child steps across the line. By 
your unbroken silence, too, you have aroused curiosity to the 
highest pitch through the air of mystery thus thrown around it. 
Second, the function and its pleasurable sensations are under the 
control of the mental emotions, and if you teach your children 
disgust, you must not be surprised if their pleasure in after life 
be permanently curtailed. 

On the other hand, those who have stood ready to befriend 
this much abused instinct, have injured their own cause by the 
"consummation" nonsense. They speak of sexual intercourse 
as the u consummation of love." This is notably untrue. 
Love, that perfection of self-sacrifice and self-abnegation, that 
all-vivifying, all-energizing, all-pervading force which moves, 
not mankind merely, but keeps the universe together, "for 
Gk>d is Love," — love is far above any such consummation. 
What they should say, and what is true, is that marital inter- 
course is this highest physical expression of love. In speaking 
of children we often hear used the expression, ' ' pledges of 



MARRIAGE. 427 

affection ' ' ; and the proper view of the reproductive act fully 
justifies the expression. 

More than this, it should be, to both, the highest physical 
enjoyment. I say should be, for I am aware that many times 
it is not. When it is not, the blame is to be laid at the door of 
the husband's ignorance. Let me whisper in the ear of every 
young man that he should be very, very gentle indeed, in the 
first claiming of this highest physical expression of love. "The 
first use a man makes of every power or talent given to him is 
a bad use. The first time a man ever uses a flail it is to the 
injury of his own head and of those who stand around him. 
The first time a child has a sharp-edged tool in his hand he cuts 
his finger. But this is no reason why he should not be ever 
taught to use a knife. The first use a man makes of his affec- 
tions is to sensualize his spirit. Yet he cannot be ennobled 
except through those very affections. The first time a kingdom 
is put in possession of liberty the result is anarchy. The first 
time a man is put in possession of intellectual knowledge he is 
conscious of the approaches of skeptical feeling. But that is 
no proof that liberty is bad or that instruction should not be 
given. It is a law of our humanity that man must know both 
good and evil ; he must know good through evil. There never 
was a principle but what triumphed through much evil ; no man 
ever progressed to greatness and goodness but through great 
mistakes." 

In the first exercise of this power, be sure that all your mis- 
takes are on the side of gentleness. Remember that nature 
should have time to adapt itself to the new order of things. 
Remember that mucous surfaces lying in prolonged and uninter- 
rupted contact with each other, grow very delicate and sensi- 
tive. Remember that they must be gradually educated up to 
tolerance of this intrusion to which they have before been utter 
strangers. Remember that nature works by gradual alteration, 
not by sudden change ; that it yields in most kindly fashion to^ 



428 MARRIAGE. 

gradual dilatation ; and that you need feel no anxiety because 
full completion of the act does not accompany the first or sec- 
ond essay. Remember that because you feel the fires of pas- 
sion kindling, it does not necessarily follow that she feels the 
same ; and that, by means of all the little loving arts, you should 
see to it that both fires are burning before an enjoyment is 
sought which should be purely mutual. Remember that you 
should here apply rigidly the principle of Horace Mann's golden 
rule of play, — " J>To fun at all that is not fun for both sides." 
Remember that a thoroughly tired brain, or body, or both, do 
not feel the rising tide of desire, and ought not to be expected 
to feel the floodtide when at the ebb. Remember these things 
to the lasting happiness of yourself and your wife. 

" We may outrun 
By violent swiftness, that which we run at, 
And lose by overrunning." 

The emphasis I lay upon these things is not that of an over- 
drawn imagination. It cannot be made too strong, I wish I 
might make it stronger. "The first intercourse," says Dr. 
-Austin Flint, Jr., "in the female is usually more or less pain- 
ful." "When married," says Dr. Henry N. Guernsey, "the 
battle for one united and harmonious life really begins. The 
wife's great and supreme love for her husband personally, will 
•allow many privileges which under other circumstances her tim- 
idity and chastity would refuse. Tenderly and with great con- 
sideration should these privileges be accepted. For, contrary 
to the opinion of many men, there is no sexual passion on the 
part of the bride that induces her to grant such liberties. Then 
how exquisitely gentle and how forbearing should be the bride- 
groom's deportment on such occasions ! Sometimes such a 
shock is administered to her sensibilities that she does not 
recover from it for years ; and in consequence of this shock, 
rudely or thoughtlessly administered, she forms a deeply rooted 



MARRIAGE. 42 9 

antipathy against the very act which is the bond and seal of a truly 
happy married life." " The initiation into marriage," says 
Dr. Napheys, "like its full fruition, maternity, is attended 
with more or less suffering. Much, however, may be done to 
avert and to lessen the pain which waits upon the first step in 
this new life. * It sometimes happens that mar 

riage is consummated with difficulty. To overcome this, care, 
management, and forbearance should always be employed, and 
anything like precipitation and violence avoided. Only the 
consequences of unrestrained impetuosity are to be feared." 

"I trust all men," says Mrs. E. B. Duffey, " do not go to 
the excess of brutality ; but is there one man in ten who does 
not insist on the payment of the conjugal debt on the first night 
of marriage, be his wife's reluctance and terrors what they 
may? Is there one man in a hundred, who will give his new* 
made bride a week to become accustomed and reconciled to the 
idea of the new relations to which she is pledged ? Is there 
one in one thousand who is willing to wait with the same 
patience, and to use the same arts that the libertine in his supe- 
rior wisdom knows so well how to employ — arts perfectly proper 
and commendable in lawful wedlock — even though it may take 
months before his purpose is gained, so that his wife shall be a 
willing partner to the consummation of marriage ? Oh what 
an amount of physical suffering to women might be saved by 
such a course ! But all this is hardly worth mentioning, when 
we consider the unhappiness, disappointment and disgust it 
brings the young wife — feelings which she probably does her 
best to conceal, for she cannot bear to own even to herself how 
great is the shock to her sentiments and affections. But the 
romance of life is gone for her with this rude awakening. Pas- 
sion, which she, while still unmarried, had looked forward to as 
something to bring her pleasure, is by this rude and violent 
masculine gratification, presented to her in so hideous a guise, 
that it will take the utmost consideration on the husband's part 



430 MARRIAGE. 

afterwards, to enable her ever completely to overcome her 
repugnance. But, probably, her husband goes on in his infatu- 
ated blindness, and adds to her disgust by excesses. He may 
have lived conscientiously the purest of lives before marriage, 
and that act has opened the door of gratification to him. He 
has never in all the phases in which the matter has been pre- 
sented to him, heard that there should be any limit in the con- 
jugal relations save that imposed by satiety. In fact, the con- 
trary idea is rather held, among even the best of people, that it 
is desirable that the conjugal debt shall be frequently paid, as 
an incentive to affection. * * It is easy to imagine 

the unsatisfactory conjugal relations which are brought about in 
punishment of the husband's early impetuosity and ignorance. 
* * Do not be in too great haste to brush the bloom from 
the fruit you covet. It will lose half its attractions at once. 
Practice in lawful wedlock the arts of the seducer, rather than 
the violence of the man who commits rape; and you will ffr)d 
the reward for your patience very sweet and lasting." 

Even the optimistic and romantic Michelet feels it necessary 
to be, for him, strangely definite here. He says; — "What I 
have to say to you is this : I make and institute you her pro- 
tector against yourself. Yes, against yourself. Do not attempt 
to deny it ; at this moment, you are her enemy. A gentle, 
respectful, and loving enemy, it is true ; but no less an enemy 
for all that. Let us cut short the insipid things that a man of 
the world would say about what the good breeding of gentlemen 
prompts them to do on such occasions. I know that when the 
greater part of them reach marriage, their ardor has been spent 
in the life they have led, in a great, too great, experience of 
pleasure. But even for those who are the most blase, it is a 
matter of amour propre, of vain impatience. This may have 
endless consequences. Hence, I believe here in that quotation 
from Natural History, which, though it maf sound harsh, is 
very comprehensive: 'The male animal is very fierce' — a ver- 



MAURI AGE. 431 

diet unhappily confirmed by medicine and surgery, which are 
too often consulted as to the consequences ; and by those who, 
when cool, are indignant at the impious fury which can sully so 
sacred a moment." 

Can it be necessary to say anything further ? One would 
think not. Yet the happiness of so many lives is marred just 
here, lives which should have overrun with love and gladness, 
that I am even yet in dread lest the warning may not be suffi- 
cient. ; ' The husband who begins with his wife with a rape, is 
a lost man," said Balzac. I wish I might brand that saying 
upon the heart of every young man. With what a sweet con- 
fidence has she put her happiness into your hands. Can you 
not afford to appreciate it ? Can you afford not to appreciate 
it ? Wait. Wait until her maidenly agitation over the change 
from girlhood to wifehood has had time to spend itself. "Wait 
until timid modesty has had time to recognize her divine right 
to have you, and be had of you, for all the happy hours of day 
and night. Wait until your mutual occupancy of the same 
room and the same pillow has passed from the new, strange, 
awkward, dreaded thing it is sure to be at first, to that dear 
delight of heart lost in heart which is the most precious thing 
on earth. Wait until your encircling arms are to her the outer 
boundary walls of perfect rest, and joy, and love. And then ? 
Well, you know that untried pathways are always trying path- 
ways. And her feet are such timid, tender feet. What can 
you do to make her happiness complete ? Stop whenever the 
limit of her desire is reached. Stop whenever dread or hesi- 
tancy would make her fearful. Stop at the frontier line of 
pain's most hateful domain; it will retreat steadily before you 
as time goes on, till lost in the distance. Stop before physical 
exhaustion of yourself turns daylight out of the world to your 
jaundiced mind, and leaves the wife with but half the husband 
she bargained for. So doing you will win the fullest enjoyment, 
the fullest love, the fullest life. 



432 MARRIAGE. 

The quaint words of Jeremy Taylor should be every husband's 
rule of life : ' ' The dominion of a man over his wife, is no 
other than as the soul rules the body ; for which it takes a 
mighty care, and uses it with a delicate tenderness; and cares 
for it in all contingencies, and watches to keep it from all evils ; 
and studies to make for it fair provisions, and very often is led 
by its inclinations and desires; and does never contradict its 
appetites but when they are evil, and then else not without some 
trouble and sorrow ; and its government comes only to this, that 
it furnishes the body with light and understanding. The soul 
governs because the body cannot else be happy ; but the gov 
ernment is no other than provision." 

Again, speaking of rules for married persons, he says : " In 
their permissions and license, they must be sure to observe the 
order of nature and the ends of God. He is an ill husband 
that uses his wife as a man treats a harlot, having no other end 
but pleasure. Concerning which our best rule is, that although 
in this, as in eating and drinking, there is an appetite to be sat- 
isfied, which cannot be done without pleasing that desire, yet 
since that desire and satisfaction was intended by nature for 
other ends, they should never be separate from those ends, but 
always be joined with all or one of these ends, with a desire of 
children, or to avoid fornication, or to lighten and ease the 
cares and sadnesses of household affairs, or to endear each 
other; but never with a purpose, either in act or desire, to sep- 
arate the sensuality from these ends which hallow it. 

"Married persons must keep such modesty and decency of 
treating each other that they never force themselves into high 
and violent lusts with arts and misbecoming devices ; always 
remembering that those mixtures are most innocent which are 
most simple and most natural, most orderly and most safe. It 
is the duty of matrimonial chastity to be restrained and tem- 
perate in the use of their lawful pleasures ; concerning which, 
although no universal rule can antecedently be given to all per- 



MARRIAGE . 433 

sons, any more than to all bodies one proportion of meat and 
drink, yet married persons are to estimate the degree of their 
license according to the following proportions. — 1. That it be 
moderate, so as to consist with health. 2. That it be so ordered 
as not to be too expensive of time, that precious opportunity of 
working out our salvation. 3. That when duty is demanded, it 
be always paid (so far as in our powers and election) according 
to the foregoing measures. 4. That it be with a temperate 
affection, without violent transporting desires or too sensual 
applications. Concerning which a man is to make judgment 
by proportion to other actions and the severities of his religion, 
and the sentences of sober and wise persons, always remember- 
ing that marriage is a provision for supply of the natural neces- 
sities of the body, not for the artificial and procured appetites 
of the mind. And it is a sad truth that many married persons 
thinking that the floodgates of liberty are set wide open, with- 
out measures or restraints (so they sail in the channel), have 
felt the final rewards of intemperance and lust by their unlaw- 
ful using of lawful permissions. Only let each of them be tem- 
perate, and both of them be modest. Socrates was wont to say 
that those women to whom nature hath not been indulgent in 
good features and colors should make it up themselves with excel- 
lent manners, and those who were beautiful and comely should 
be careful that so fair a body be not polluted with unhandsome- 
usages. To which Plutarch adds, that a wife, if she be unhand- 
some, should consider how extremely ugly she should be if she 
wanted modesty ; but if she be handsome, let her think how 
gracious that beauty would be if she superadds chastity." 

Yet more quaint are the words of Chaucer: u An for that 
many a man," he says, "weeneth he may not sinne for no 
lecherousness that he doth with- his wife, certes that opinion is 
false ; God wot a man may slay himself with his own knife, and 
make himself drunk with his own tun. Man should love his 
wife by discretion — patiently and temperately. * * * * 

28) 



434 MARRIAGE. 

" Then shall man understand that for three things a man and 
his wife may fleshly assemble (come together). The first is in 
intent of engendure of children to the service of God — for certes 
that is the cause final of matrimony, for neither of them has 
power of his own body. The second cause is to yield every of 
them his debt unto other of his body. The third is to eschew 
lechery and villany. The fourth forsooth is deadly sin. * * * 
Understand that if they assemble only for amorous love, and 
for none of the foresaid causes, but for to accomplish that burn- 
ing delight, they reck never how oft, soothly, it is deadly sin ; 
and yet, with sorrow, some folk will more pain them for to do, 
than to their appetite sumceth." 

It is said that the light of the fire-fly and glow-worm is the 
elfin call of the insect to its mate. What heart has ever known 
such degradation as to have other than the sweetest reveries over 
the building of the nest in the spring-time by the happily mated 
birds. May we gain such a conception of that sacred rite, which 
is the highest expression of love, the greatest physical delight, 
the presaging of the patter of little feet, and the prattle of baby 
tongues, that it shall be lifted up from the humiliation and 
debasement which have been heaped upon it, and be clothed 
upon with the royal purple of the heart's inner palace ; gaining 
in our hearts an aspect of joy, of sweetness, of innocence, of 
purity, of which the robin's nest in spring is but the faintest 
type ; a halo of softened light, beyond all comparison with the 
flickering taper of the fire-fly . 

"By sweet experience know 
That marriage, rightly understood, 
Gives, to the prudent and the good, 
A paradise below." 

Hightly understanding, we need not be in doubt lest, per- 
chance, we do not possess what that somewhat wilful debator, 
Joseph Cook, calls "a supreme, adeqately tested affection." 



MARRIAGE. 435 

" Open the door of thy heart, 
And open thy chamber door, 
And my kisses shall teach thy lips 
The love that shall fade no more 
Till the sun grows cold, 
And the stars are old, 
And the leaves of the Judgment 
Book Unfold!" 

Do you fear adversity ? 

" What though there came the bitter days as well as sweet, 
What though there came rough pathways unto weary feet, — 

Naught could us sever. 
Joined hand in hand, the husband and the wife, — 
Joined heart in heart, the sacred inner life, 

Harmless the never and forever. 

*' Let civil conflict's most relentless blast, 
O'er our two lives made one, attempt to cast 

A shadow dreary, 
And lo ! no sooner is it come than it is dissipate, 
So must it ever be, love always conquers hate, 

And hearts are never weary ! 

" For clouds may come between us and the sun, 
The sun himself may set and think the day is done, — 

We smile together, 
Sweeter than light of sun the light on Hymen's altar, 
Nor cloud, nor setting, nor eclipse can make it falter, 

Nor wintry weather ! " 

Do. you fear that the frosts of time and of years will be chil- 
ling frosts ? I look forward through the years of youth and 
prime to the coming of age. I see you sitting side by side. 
What is it that she is saying ? 

" John Anderson, my Jo, John, 
When we were first acquent, 
Your locks were like the raven, 
Your bonnie brow was brent ; 



436 



MARRIAGE. 

But now your brow is bald, Joan, 
Your locks are like the snow. 
But blessings on your frasty poir 
John Anderson, my Jo. 

John Anderson, my Jo, John, 
We clamb the hill thegither ; 
And mony a canty day, John, 
We've had wi' ane anither ; 
Now we maun totter down, John, 
But hand in hand we'll go, 
And sleep thegither at the foot, 
John Anderson, my Jo." 



And I bear you make reply: 



" O, lay thy hand in mine, dear! 

We're growing old ; 
But Time hath brought no sign, dear, 

That hearts grow cold. 
'Tis long, long since our new love 

Made life divine ; 
But age enricheth true lore, 

Like noble wine. 

" And lay thy cheek to mine, dear, 

And take thy rest ; 
Mine arms around thee twine, dear, 

And make thy nest. 
A many cares are pressing 

On this dear head ; 
But Sorrow's hands in blessing 

Are surely laid. 

" O, lean thy life on mine, dear! 

T will shelter thee. 
Thou wert a winsome vine, dear, 

On my young tree : 
And so, till boughs are leafless, 

And songbirds flown, 
We'll twine, then lay us, griefless, 

Together down."* 



e Gerald Massey. 



MARRIAGE. 437 

It should always be borne in mind that this highest physical 
■expression of affection is a matter of real expense to the econ- 
omy. Pressure is a mode of expressing attachment, but costs 
nothing physically, and may be repeated indefinitely. Not so 
with this highest of expressions. It involves the pouring out of an 
expensive fluid, and the expenditure of a large amount of ner- 
vous force. Physically speaking, it costs; and it becomes at 
once a question of interest as to how often, in justice to the 
economy, this expense may be incurred. Turkish sanitary and 
marital law is said to fix the frequency of indulgence at once in 
seven days. Solon laid down the law at three times a month . 
Acton says: — "My own opinion is that, talcing hard-worked 
intellectual married men residing in London as the type, sex- 
ual congress ought not to take place more frequently than once 
in seven or ten days ; and when my opinion is asked by patients 
whose natural desires are strong, I advise those wishing to con- 
trol their passions to indulge in intercourse twice on the same 
night. I have noticed that in many persons a single inter- 
course does not effectually empty the vasa deferentia, and that 
within the next twenty-four hours strong sexual feelings again 
arise; whereas, if sexual intercourse is repeated on the same 
night, the patient is able to so restrain his feelings ten days or 
a fortnight may elapse without the recurrence of desire." 

The rule laid down here for the Londoner must not be taken 
thoughtlessly as the rule for the American also. Recalling the 
more sturdy and phlegmatic Englishman on the one hand, and 
the more nervous and high-strung American on the other; apply- 
ing Dr. Acton's rule to the one, and deducing a proportionate 
rule for the other, you will arrive at a very fair estimate of that 
frequency which shall be consistent with the best mental and 
physical vigor. I am careful to lay down no rule which shall 
fix a definite number of days, and say that this is best for all 
men. For just so long as men differ in their physical make up, 
and in their surroundings and vocations, just so long must each 



438 MARRIAGE. 

man be a law unto himself. Besides this, I speak only of your- 
self, and so deal with but half the question. I depend upon 
you to see to it that it is never allowed to drift into that hideous 
perversion which makes it a matter of one-sided selfishness. I 
charge you that you remember that it is always to be a mutual 
covenant, a mutual enjoyment; never a masculine debauch. 

The consequences of excess in this matter are much the same 
in kind as those which follow the more unnatural perversions 
which are spoken of at length in the succeeding chapter. The 
dhTerence lies in their more reluctant coming, less aggravated 
form, and more ready disappearance when the subject of them 
makes up his mind to " cease to do evil, and learn to do well." 
There is the same lassitude of mind and of body ; the same intel- 
lectual and physical languor ; the same dread in approaching, 
and feeling of incompetency for, any task of hand or head, 
developing into those nervous disorders which are the expres- 
sion of combined irritation and exhaustion. 

"Ina considerable proportion of the cases of nervous break- 
down which have come under my notice," says Dr. H. C» 
Wood, Professor of Nervous Diseases in the University of Penn- 
sylvania, "the disorder has had its origin in matrimonial 
excesses. Intemperance in this regard rests as often in igno- 
rance as in lack of self-control. Whether indulged in through 
want of knowledge or want of virtue, excess always brings the 
penalty in the shape of weariness, lassitude, loss of power to 
do mental work, and gradual impairment of nerve-force, which 
may progress until the man or woman is reduced to a condition 
of hysterical exhaustion. Sometimes excess seems for a long 
time to bear no evil fruits, until suddenly a serious organic 
nervous affection is developed. The danger from this source is 
especially real to brain-workers, as the robust man, who leads a 
life of activity in the open air, is far more able to resist. The 
important point as to where the line is to be drawn between 
proper and improper indulgence must be settled by each indi- 



MARRIAGE. 439 

vidual for himself, with or without the aid of his physician. To 
phlegmatic persons, whose occupation is active, and whose 
work is largely muscular, greater latitude is allowable ; but for 
the nervous student, great caution is necessary." 

It is well to keep in mind that the greatest amount of pleas- 
ure is always to be found on the side of temperance. It is 
found there because a healthful, elastic body has the greatest 
possible capabilities for enjoyment ; because the weak, dispir- 
ited, worn-out body, which is the inevitable result of that 
astounding frequency of indulgence which too often obtains, can 
respond but faintly to any pleasurable sensation. An exhausted 
body is almost sure to fill the heart with disgust, and the life 
with unhappiness. 

Could there be drawn a more pleasing picture of the way of 
happiness and delight, than is this : " Let a man woo his wife, 
after the law has delivered her over to him, as assiduously as he 
did in their ante-nuptial days, until she yields willingly to his 
desires. When once this is accomplished, let him sink the hus- 
band in the lover again, and imposing on himself a strict con- 
tinence perfectly compatible with the health of both, for a 
definite period, say a month at least, meantime woo his wife 
again. Let him resist temptation as conscientiously as in their 
unmarried days, and treat her with all the deference, considera- 
tion, and modest respect that he showed in those days. And he 
will find that each returning monthly marital conjunction will 
be fraught with greater delight than the sensualist, who indulges 
in daily or semi-weekly excesses, can ever dream of. Even if 
there should 'be occasional i slips from virtue ' in this married 
courtship, no one would have the right to. say a word, and hus- 
band and wife would forgive each other out of the abundance of 
their mutual love." 

No quarter should be given the sickly notion that a temperate 
life requires, on the part of husband and wife, the occupancy of 
separate rooms and beds. He is a poor excuse for a man whom 



4 10 MAREIAGE. 

reason cannot rule save as she puts him under lock and key. 
Beside, the married pair can ill afford to lose that complete 
opening of heart to heart which comes only under the shelter- 
ing wings of darkness, only with the confidences of a common 
pillow. Do not let a double calamity come upon you, and by 
the one act of fleeing to another resting place convict your man- 
hood of cowardice, and deny yourself and wife the most inti- 
mate communings. Be temperate because it is right and reas- 
onable, and therefore the best and largest life every way. Be 
temperate by your own force of character, instead of allowing 
yourself to be driven to the necessity of cutting off your right 
hand or plucking out your right eye to compel yourself to live 
a noble life. And let the rule laid down by Lallemand be the 
rule of your indulgences : " When connection is followed by a 
joyous feeling, a bien etre general^ as well as fresh vigor ; when 
the head feels more free and easy, the body more elastic and 
lighter; when a greater disposition to exercise or intellectual labor 
arises, and ike genital organs evince an increase of vigor andt 
activity, we may infer that an imperious want has been satisfied 
within the limits necessary for health. The happy influence 
which all the organs experience, is similar to that which follows 
the accomplishment of every function necessary to the econ- 
omy.' ' 

As is well known, no sexual intercourse should be allowed 
during the time of the menstrual flow. But should it be for- 
bidden during the existence of pregnancy also ? A sharp dif- 
ference of opinion has existed on this question . The physicians 
of some years ago, and the majority of those of the present day 
who are not physicians, are united in the belief that intercourse 
should be prohibited for the entire period which marks the dura- 
tion of pregnancy, as being neither normal nor physiological. 
But I find no reason given in support of this belief, save that 
derived from observation of the habits of the lower animals. 
It is insisted that the beasts rarely cohabit during this time. In 



MARRIAGE . 441 

answer it may be urged that it is very possible that the brutes 
do not set the pattern for mankind. The strong tendency of 
the sex impulse among them to confine itself almost entirely 
to certain times, remaining inactive and dormant for long inter- 
vals; and their promiscuous association, suggest differences of 
organization and habits which make them questionable as pat- 
terns set up to be followed by human beings and human society. 

My own observation is that a moderate, gentle, careful sexual 
exercise is something which in no way exerts any undesirable 
influence upon the pregnancy which may be in progress. In 
fact it seems reasonable to suppose it positively helpful as calm- 
ing any little irritation which might result from the absence of 
the ordinary exercise, and as tending to preserve unbroken the 
even tenor of the accustomed life at a time when the mind is 
peculiarly sensitive to any seeming coldness or indifference, to 
anything in the least degree unusual. But should it prove in 
the least painful, or disagreeable, or unwelcome, it would be 
sufficient proof, of course, that it should not be indulged. 

This matter is not often discussed in medical circles, but now 
.and then a doctor may be found putting himself down on the 
side of reason and of sense. Dr. Henry N. Guernsey says, 
" When pregnancy occurs it is in most cases more healthful and 
better for the expectant mother to allow intercourse at regular 
times, very gently, throughout her gestation." In the opinion 
of Dr. Geo. H. Napheys, "During those days when the wife, 
if she were not pregnant, would have been l unwell,' marital 
intercourse should be abstained from. It is then injurious to 
the mother, and dangerous to the life of the child, as it is liable 
to excite miscarriage. But if this habitual epoch of the monthly 
sickness be avoided, there is no reason why passion should not 
be gratified in moderation and with caution during the whole 
period of pregnancy." 

In short, those who oppose, and urge the example of the 
beasts, should be informed that the explorations of that sturdy 



442 MARRIAGE. 

missionary, Dr. Livingstone, show their principles to have been 
carried more nearly to perfection in savage Africa, than any 
where else. His journal states: — u The women adjacent ta 
Mozambique partake a little of the wild animals' nature ; for, 
like most members of the inferior races of animals, they refuse 
all intercourse with their husbands when enceinte, and they 
continue this for about three years afterwards, or until the child 
is weaned, which usually happens about the third year. I was 
told, on most respectable authority, that many fine young native 
men marry one wife, and live happily with her till this period ;, 
nothing will then induce her to continue to cohabit with him ; 
and as the separation is to continue for three years, the man is 
almost compelled to take up with another wife : this was men- 
tioned to me as one of the great evils of society. The same 
absurdity prevails on the West Coast, and there it is said that 
the men acquiesce from ideas of purity." 

Finally, what shall we say of children ? And with what feel- 
ings should we look forward to their coming ? 

Two young men, both professed Christians, both the children 
of favored Christian homes, both having had more than aver- 
age advantages of culture and education, both of proper age 
for marriage, both of unquestioned character, have, within a 
few days, volunteered to me their opinions as to the desirable- 
ness of children. One remarked that "When he got married 
he didn't mean to start an orphan asylum; " the other, that 
"If he ever got married he didn't mean to have any young 
'uns." Representative young men as they are in all else, let 
us hope that in this sentiment they represent but a small class 
of young men. Yet the number is not small of those who look 
ahead toward a possible parentage with dubious misgiving; to 
whom the vision of prospective babies is a great drawback to 
marriage, rather than one of its best gifts. 

I do not want to beg the question.' I want to look at both sides 
of it with spectacles of precisely the same magnifying power. 



MARRIAGE. ±43 

I am no advocate of an unlimited and indiscriminate family. I 
believe with Jeremy Taylor that there are impulses other than 
that of desire for children, which may properly lead man and 
wife to that highest expression of affection. The creation of 
children and gratification of appetite are by no means its only 
result. The stamp of its subtle influence leaves permanent 
impress upon the individuals immediately concerned. This is 
perhaps not so easy of demonstration on the side of the hus- 
band; but in the case of the wife, the characteristics of her 
children long since called attention to it. Thus children by a 
second husband often bear a marked resemblance to the first 
husband ; and if the first child of a negress have a white father, 
succeeding children of a black father will be of lighter shade 
than would otherwise have been the case. Supposing that this 
apparently fundamental change might, after all, be referable to 
mental impressions merely, certain experimenters have pushed 
their investigations among the lower animals, using the utmost 
care to exclude mental causes, only to find that the persistent 
and unvarying results are altogether independent of sight and 
imagination. Among these observers is found no less a name 
than that of Darwin. And young people should be taught that 
when no children are sought, they still are not only gratifying 
an appetite and endearing themselves to each other, but, in an 
important and real sense, moulding each other as well. 

Every young couple ought to know that conception is not, 
likely to take place during that time which is bounded on one 
side by the twelfth or fourteenth day after menstruation, and 
on the other by the third day preceding menstruation. During 
this portion of the intermenstrual period, the occurrence of 
conception is the exception. Dr. Carpenter says in his Physi- 
ology, — "In all except about six per cent of cases, according: 
to M. E-ociborski, coition will not result in impregnation, if not. 
performed until ten days after the cessation of the menses, 
nor within four days previous to, or during their occurrence. 



44:4: MARRIAGE. 

Coitus immediately after or during menstruation, has often 
been advised as a cure for sterility, and frequently with success. 
Among the Jews, women are not allowed sexual intercourse 
until twelve days after menstruation ; yet the women of that 
race are noted for their fertility. This is accounted for on the 
supposition that impregnation took place just previous to men- 
struation. When conception occurs at this time, the catamenia 
sometimes appear, and are sometimes absent; if they appear 
their duration is generally less than usual." 

This time during which the occurrence of conception is im- 
probable, and total abstinence, are the only legitimate regu- 
lators of the size of the family. Nor is the latter such an 
austere suggestion as might at first appear. The demands of 
appetite are not nearly so imperious within wedlock, as with 
the celibate. Neither is self-denial without its reward. Pro- 
longed abstinence between the married has more than once 
been followed by the conception of men whom the world 
delights to call great. 

All the so-called preventives of conception, avoid as you would 
the plague. They are sure to blast the health of husband, or 
wife, or both. Do not mistake brevity of statement for lack of 
emphasis. The statement is literally true, and it behooves you 
to take it to heart. All those manoevres which would cheat 
nature without giving her direct affront, deserve the name of 
conjugal onanism, and are sure to be followed by the same 
damage as is self-abuse, though the hurt will come less quickly, 
and will be less severe. While the more flagitious procedures 
are reckless bids for shattered health. Unaided common sense 
should teach any one that injections used to destroy the depos- 
ited semen are the direct means of intractible- and distressing 
inflammations ; — and for that matter, are but doubtful agents 
for accomplishing the desired end. Unaided common sense 
should teach that those rubber contrivances for gloving the 
imale or female, which so infest the drug stores, and which leave 



MARRIAGE. 445< 

the organism half-satisfied and irritated, are sure to bring their 
just reward of rasped and broken nerves. " The condom is a 
cuirass against pleasure and a cobweb against danger," is the 
dictum of the great French surgeon, Ricord. 

For the sake of your own happiness shun all these devilish 
contrivances. That young man who said to me that " he didn't 
mean to have any young 'uns," avowed his purpose to sin 
against his own, and his wife's body. "There is a way that 
seemeth right unto a man, but the ends thereof are the ways 
of death." If we do not live naturally, in accordance with 
nature, — if we attempt to cheat her in any way, we must take 
the penalty, without the hope, even, of escape through a capri- 
cious jury or an erratic judge. But this is only the physical 
sin. How much you sin against yourself in the withering of 
that character which should have been kept full, and sweet, and 
symmetrical, and tender, by the twining of dimpled arms 
about your neck ; how much you sin against her who is ordained 
mother of mankind, when you deny her aught bat the pitiful 
little dolls to which in infancy her heart went out, it is not for 
me to say. Yet I do not desire that children be born into your 
home for these reasons, for then would they be born into your 
home and not into your heart at the same time, and this is the 
birth of a bastard. Let no sense of duty, no fear of ill-health, 
no desire for the discipline of parentage, be the half-hearted call 
which brings the children flocking to your hearthstone. We 
must have something better than that. I do not forget the 
unpleasantnesses. I know that babies are apt to lie awake, and 
kick, and scream, at just that time which all the world has 
unanimously voted to sleep; and you wonder, exasperatingly, 
why in this instance the majority can't rule; that they are lia- 
ble at any moment to return to the cold world the contents of 
their dear little colicky stomachs ; that they are apt to be dis- 
tressingly wet about their chins, not to mention other regions ; 



446 MARRIAGE. 

that in ways innumerable do they fill with despair the hearts of 
their bachelor uncles . 

Now with softened footsteps go with me to an upper cham- 
ber. By the dim light we see the tiny waxen form which was 
but yesterday the baby of the household. Over it bend the 
father and mother in the greatest grief that they have ever 
known. As you witness this scene does not the conviction force 
itself upon you that this life holds a love of which you know no 
more than the iron post to which you hitch your horse ? Can 
you live in the world, and in endless variety of manifestation 
meet daily the unbroken testimony of fathers and mothers that 
they love their children above all else in the world, and not 
believe it ? Will you say that all men are liars; that all men are 
trying to impose upon themselves in this matter ? See too, how 
little difference it makes to them what the age may be. If they 
hance to be babies, then there is nothing on earth to compare with 
,ae little ones. If they be boys and girls, then nothing can rival 
the charms of the "interesting age. " If they be men and women, 
nothing can exceed the parental pride in that they are bearing the 
part of men and women. An old man said recently, speaking 
of his youngest child, just come to man's estate: " Why we 
had so many already, and were so poor, that we thought we had 
enough, and looked a little askance when another one came; but 
now I am sure I don't know what we could possibly do without 
"Walter," — for he was the support of his parents' declining days, 
their comfort and their exceeding great joy. 

"Dick," said Abraham Lincoln to Gov. Oglesby, "remem- 
ber to keep close to the people ; they are always right, and will 
never mislead any one ! " Are you not safe in trusting them on 
the subject of children ? Do you believe that they are mis- 
leading you when they seem so bound up in their " treasures?" 
It need not alarm you that you cannot, in anticipation, feel as 
they do in realization. Trust that this flower of the heart will 
bloom within you also under the gentle influence of the warmth 



MARRIAGE. 447 

and light of your own home. You cannot afford to have enter 
jour soul the leanness which conies upon the childless man. 
Without them you will never know what a broad sympathy, or 
a tender heart, is. Without them you will never get a glimpse 
of the brightest side of life. 

" To the end of time 'twill be still the same, 
For the Earth first laughed when the children came \ n 

In the words of Theodore Parker : " I have heard a boorish 
pedant wonder how a woman could spend so many years of her 
life with little children, and be content ! In her satisfaction he 
found a proof of her inferiority, and thought her but the 'ser- 
vant of a wooden cradle,' herself almost as wooden. But in 
that gentle companionship she nursed herself and fed a higher 
faculty than our poor pedant, with his sophomoric wit, had yet 
brought to consciousness, and out of her wooden cradle got 
more than he had learned to know. A physician once, with 
unprofessional impiety, complained that we are not born men, 
but babies. He did not see the value of infancy as a delight to 
the mature, and for the education of the heart. At one period 
of life we need objects of instinctive passion, at another, of 
instinctive benevolence without passion. " u It doesn't matter 
at all," says John Ruskin, "what Mr. So-and-So thinks of your 
work ; but it matters a great deal what that bird is doing up 
there in its nest, or how that vagabond child at the street cor- 
ner is managing his game of knuckle-down. And remember, 
you cannot turn aside from your own interests to the birds and 
the children's interests, unless you have long before got into 
the habit of loving and watching birds and children ; so that it 
all comes at last to the forgetting yourselves, and the living out 
of yourselves, in the calm of the great world ; or, if you will, 
in its agitation ; but always in a calm of your own bringing. 
Do not think it wasted time to submit yourselves to any influ- 
ence which may bring upon you any noble feeling." 



448 MARRIAGE. 

The old women who culpably exalt the dangers of maternity, 
and the sight of married women who are faded and worn, often 
make the young husband hesitate at the thought of his wife 
becoming a mother. But the fact of motherhood is not respon- 
sible for the existence of broken down women. As a rule, 
mothers enjoy better health than the single and the childless. 
For the bearing of children is not a disease, it is the natural 
way of life ; and when a young couple live properly and natu- 
rally, the young wife shows a development, physical and mental, 
which is as pleasing as it is wonderful. There need be no fear 
for her, for she will grow in health and beauty. The bearing 
and rearing of children is set down, by Dr. Holland, as "the 
most dignified, delightful, and honorable office of her life." 
When Madam de fetael asked Napoleon who was the greatest 
woman in France, he made answer, — "She who has had most 
children." 

What say they of home and children who have had large 
fields of activity outside the home? Louise, Queen of Prussia, 
mother of the present sovereign, wrote thus to her father : 
"Gladly will you hear, dear father, that the calamities which 
have befallen us have not forced their way into our wedded and 
home life, rather have strengthened the same, and made it even 
more precious to us. The King, the best of beings, is kinder 
and more loving than ever. Often I think I see in him the lover 
and the bridegroom. Always showing more by his actions than 
by his words, I see the watchfulness that he has for me in all 
points. Only yesterday he said to me in his plain and simple 
way, looking at me with his true eyes : 4 Thou, dear Louise I 
Thou hast become to me in misfortune still more precious and 
beloved. Now I know from experience what I have in thee. 
It may storm without, if only it remains fair weather in our 
wedded life. Because I love thee so I have called our latest- 
born little daughter Louise. May she become a Louise.' — 
This goodness moved me to tears. It is my pride, my joy, and 



MARRIAGE . 449 

my happiness to possess the love and approval of this best of 
men ; and because I heartily love him in return, and we are so 
united that the will of the one is also the will of the other, it 
becomes easy for me to preserve this happy union of sentiments, 
which has become closer with years. In a word, he pleases me 
in all points, and I please him, and we are happiest when we 
are together. Pardon me, dear father, that I tell this with a 
certain boastfulness. There lies in it the artless expression of 
my happiness, which interests no one in this world more deeply 
than you, dear, fond father ! How to treat others ; that, too, 1 
have learned from, the King . I cannot talk upon this subject, 
it is enough that we understand it. Our children are our treas- 
ures, and our eyes rest upon them with satisfaction and hope." 

She who wrote that letter lived in the stormy days of the first 
Napoleon, and is famous for the courage of her encounter with 
him. It was she who filled all the thought of Blucher ; and 
when, March 30, 1814, " after all the bloody contests on Ger- 
man and French soil, he led his victorious army to the heights 
of Montmartre, and saw beneath his feet the great capital of 
France conquered, he gave expression to his thought in the 
proud words, ' Louise is avenged.'' " 

Young men should be warned that excessive use of tobacco 
may show its damaging influence in the frames of puny babies ; 
and that drunkenness is the father of idiots. It is said that. 
Diogenes remarked to an imbecile, "Surely, young man, thy 
father begat thee when he was drunk." And in his " Anatomy 
of Melancholy, " Burton makes the assertion that, "if a drunken 
man begets a child it will never likely have a good brain." 
And modern science endorses these opinions. But if you will 
eschew vice and live uprightly, you need not be anxious lest 
your children should not honor you. " The popular belief that 
a stupid son is the necessary sequence of a brilliant father is 
daily disproved, one of the latest instances being that of Waldo 
Story, the eldest son of the sculptor, W. W. Story. Graduat- 
es 



4:50 MAEBIAGE. 

ing at Oxford some years ago, the young man at once adopted 
his father's calling, and has been studying and working in Italy 
ever since. Two of his works have recently been sent to the 
London exhibition, one of them, a 'Paris and Helen,' being a 
remarkably fine reproduction of the spirit and methods of 
classic art." "The Darwin family affords a remarkable illus- 
tration of hereditary genius. Mr. Darwin's father and grand- 
father were both men of great distinction as physicians, natu- 
ralists, and authors, and he leaves two sons that have already 
proved themselves able investigators — one as a physicist, and 
the other as a naturalist." 

Be confident that you are in the best and safest way when 
you put yourself in the center of the divinely appointed family. 
Stand not aloof and alone, but through the ministry of wife and 
children, join the great family of humankind. Be concerned to 
join that school which is the only one imparting a really liberal 
education. Be anxious that you may learn through parentage 
the thought of God toward you, just as through the flower you 
.get a hint of His divine thought for beauty. In the language of 
'Charlotte Cushman, " To me it seems as if, when God conceived 
the world, that was Poetry ! He formed it, and that was Sculpt- 
ure ! He colored it, and that was Painting ! And then, crowning 
work of all, He peopled it with living beings, and that was 
the grand, divine, eternal Drama! " 

Though children may be " cheap at the price of pain and 
sickness, and care and toil," yet let me tell you that you have 
exaggerated the discomforts of baby days. A baby's business 
is to eat, sleep and grow. A well baby is not a cross baby. It 
is not the habit of the child-mind to be unhappy. Even teeth- 
ing is a physiological process ; not a disease. John Hunter 
said, " Give children plenty of milk, plenty of sleep, and plenty 
of flannel." That saying is worth more than all the chamo- 
mile tea and soothing syrup which misguided parents have 
poured down helpless infant throats since the world began. A 



MARRIAGE. 451 

thoroughly healthy baby is a happy, entertaining, welcome 
member of the home circle. And under intelligent care, the 
baby is more certain to maintain exhuberant health, than any 
other member of the household. 

Do you say that your treasure will never be safe from the 
envious hand of Death? Is it not " better to have loved and 
lost than never to have loved at all? " 

" He is not worthy of the honeycomb 
That shuns the hive because the bees have stings." 

Can you tell me how many fathers have been led up toward 
the best things of which they were capable, by the " touch of 
a vanished hand" — the soft hand of a child? 

" How far, how very far it seemed, 
To where that starry taper gleamed, 
Placed by her grandchild on the sill 
Of the cottage window on the hill ! 
Many a parent heart before, 
Laden till it could bear no more, 
Has seen a heavenward light that smiled, 
And knew it placed there by a child ; 
A long-gone child, whose anxious face, 
Gazed toward them down the deeps of spacev 
Longing for the loved to come 
To the quiet of that home." 

Not a few men hesitate to become fathers because they do 
not see how they could give their children a start in the world. 
They are poor men, and unknown men ; and, with a family to 
take care of, do not see but that they must remain poor and 
unknown. They cannot endow their children with either 
money, or the prestige of a great name. I would remind all 
such that an old-fashioned book says that "A good man leaveth 
an inheritance to his children's children ; " that from out of the 
iron-like organization of society in Great Britain, Archbishop 
W h at ely could say, "The man who gives his children habits 



452 MARRIAGE. 

of industry, provides for them better than by giving them a 
fortune ; " that Garfield could answer from this side the Atlan- 
tic, " Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify; but nine time» 
out of ten, the best thing that can happen to a young man is to 
be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself. 
In all my acquaintance, I never knew a man to be drowned who 
was worth the saving." In other words, poverty is a noble 
inheritance. It is the best of legacies. " Virtue and a trade 
are the best portions for children," said George Herbert. He 
could not have spoken more truly. 

It is said that old Dr. Kirk, of Boston, valued greatly the 
outlook from his study window. It commanded a view of the 
school yard, and its troups of rollicking children. May each 
one of us be true-hearted enough, as we stand at the win- 
dow which looks out over our plans and hopes for life, to see 
with unspeakable delight the fairy faces of our children yet to 
be. For, 

" To make a happy fireside clime 
To weans and wife, 
That's the true pathos and sublime 
Of human life." 

And as the future melts into the present, may the hope be 
swallowed up in the reality ; until, 

" When the lessons and tasks are all ended, 
And Death says ' The school is dismissed,' 
May the little ones gather around me 
To bid me good-night, and be kissed," 

And the wife ? Ah, I have not forgotten her. She is more 
motherly than when I first knew her, and by just so much, 
more queenly and more my own . I shall never have done 
courtingV^er. I have had many dear friends, but she is incom- 
parably dear beyond them all. There is no spoken word which 
can tell what she is to me. "And now, as I close my task v 



MARRIAGE . 453 

subduing my desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But, 
one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light by which I see all 
other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And that 
remains. 

"I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside 
me. My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the 
night ; but the dear presence, without which I were nothing, 
bears me company. 

"0 Agnes, my soul, so may thy face be by me when I 
close my life indeed ; so may I, when realities are melting from 
me like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near 
me, pointing upward I " 



CHAPTER VIII. 



SELF-ABUSE. 



Having passed in review the more important considerations 
relative to the reproductive function ; and its physiological 
quiescence and proper exercise in man, it remains but to 
speak of the disorders affecting the generative system. 
Were these disorders due to stealthy contagion from without, 
like small-pox ; were they the result of the inbreathings of any 
invisible miasm, like malaria ; were they the direful fruits of 
the poisoning of earth's sparkling fountains, as is typhoid fever, 
I could take up my pen with an unburdened heart. But it is 
not so. Yet not small-pox, nor malaria, nor typhoid fever, nor 
all three together, can claim a tithe of the victims which are 
offered up a continual sacrifice to this Moloch of all the cen- 
turies. And these victims are not the victims of disease. The 
only disorders of this department of the economy worthy of 
note, are the penalties following remorselessly upon the viola- 
tion of Nature's laws. It is transgression, not misfortune ; it 
is vice, not disease, which breathes its poisoned breath into the 
nostrils of our boys and young men, and they become dead 
souls, drifting helpless, purposeless, within their shipwrecked 
bodies. 

A solitary wreck is a sad sight enough ; but the sea of life is 
covered with them, and its shores are strewn with them. Do 
you think that I exaggerate ? Go ask any teacher in the public 
schools who is devoted and earnest in his work, and observant 
of the children in his care ; go ask any true-hearted physician 
who is a man of experience, and you will only wonder that 



SELF-ABUSE. 455 

teacher and physician do not wake the echoes of our streets with 
the cry of ancient time, — " Yet forty days and Ninevah shall 
be overthrown." 

Do not ask me for statistics . I have not the heart to blot 
this page with them. I do not dare to say how many go to 
premature graves each year, through this sinful folly which 
eclipses all the other weaknesses of mankind. Come with me 
to the room where they await the burial. They lie side by side 
in solid phalanx, stretching away in every direction as far as*we 
can see, — the innumerable host of a spectral army. With 
hands compassionate we turn gently back the sheet which hides 
their faces. Here is the face of hopeless idiocy, its pathetic 
vacancy softened by the kindly hand of death, for there is no 
knowledge nor wisdom, in the grave whither he has gone. Here 
is the upturned face which has been seamed, and scarred, and 
farrowed, and blistered by the most loathsome qf all leprosies, 
its hideous deformity softened by the the merciful touch of 
death, for the mandate dust to dust reduces all alike to ashes. 
Here is the countenance of flushed and swollen passion, its 
maddened appetites, as painted upon lip and cheek and brow, 
more gentle made to seem by the cold finger of death, for its 
icy wrapping recks naught of earthly gratifications. Here is 
the face of suicide's despair, its haunting desperation calmed 
and stayed by death's mysterious presence, for its pulseless 
grasp knows neither hope nor fear. With gentlest touch of 
hearts that have grown very pitiful, we cover up the faces of the 
dead and pass out. "The little I have seen of the world, and 
know of the history of mankind, teaches me to look upon the 
the errors of others in sorrow, and not in anger. When I take 
the history of one poor heart that has sinned and suffered, and 
represent to myself the struggles and temptations it has passed, 
— the brief pulsations of joy, the feverish inquietude of hope 
and fear, the tears of regret, the feebleness of purpose, the 
pressure of want, the desertion of friends, the scorn of a world 



456 ( SELF-ABUSE.' 

that has little charity, the desolation of the soul's sanctuary, 
and threatening voices within, — health gone, happiness gone, 
even hope that stays longest with us gone, — I would fain leave 
the erring soul of my fellow-inan with him from whose hands 
it came." And then would I turn from the dead to the living, 
sounding the tocsin of alarm that shall awake them to the dan- 
gers which encompass, and pointing out the path of safety and 
the means df regaining it if already lost. 

Understand, first, that the disorders of the reproductive sys 
tern are divided into two great classes. 1. Those dependent 
upon solitary vice. 2. Those dependent upon illicit sexual 
intercourse. 

1. By masturbation, onanism, or self-abuse, whichever 
term you may prefer, is understood the excitation of 
the reproductive mechanism by the hand, or other allied devices, 
for the sake of the pleasurable sensations thus induced. This 
iiabit may be formed years before puberty, and continue indefi- 
nitely thereafter. At and after puberty, the culmination of the 
sensations thus aroused, is accompanied by a discharge of the 
seminal fluid. This excitement of the reproductive sphere 
being wilfully and continually provoked, there obtains an over- 
isensitiveness to all that may excite ; and the patient finds that 
the ordinary contact of society, the mere recurrence of an 
unclean thought, slight and accidental frictions, are sufficient to 
excite an erection and emission. More than this, dreams, and 
excitements, and emissions, begin to intrude themselves upon 
the hours of sleep with increasing frequency. By degrees the 
tone of the apparatus is lowered, until the discharge of semen 
takes place at any and all times, day and night, upon the slight- 
est provocation, and without the accompaniment of any but the 
feeblest erection and the faintest sensation ; and in the most 
advanced stages, both may altogether disappear. 

This loss of semen in abnormal frequency, whether slight or 
in extreme degree, is known under the term, spermatorrhoea. It 



SELF-ABUSE. 457 

is but very rarely that spermatorrhoea is the result of anything 
save masturbation ; and it is this infernal twin ship of masturba- 
tion and spermatorrhoea which is blasting the health and with- 
ering the intellect of that class of our boys and young men who 
are virtuous in the ordinary use of that word, and to whom we 
look for the perpetuation of the bone and sinew of our Republic. 
In this we find that Nemesis which follows after our young men 
with sleepless vigilance, always and forever dragging them 
down from the best things of which they are capable. 

I am thankful to say that the majority of masturbators have 
their eyes opened to the evil of the practice, and abandon it, 
before tasting its bitterest fruits ; but the number of those who 
have been entrapped by the habit to a greater or less extent — 
who have the smell of fire upon their garments — is astonishingly 
great . One of the best surgeons in my acquaintance, a mem- 
ber of the dominant school of medicine, expresses the opinion 
that ninety-nine out of every hundred young men have more or 
less experience of this habit. 1 do not agree with him. I think 
his estimate too high ; but I do not hesitate to affirm that the 
majority have sinned more or less in this direction. 

I know that this will seem to many an appalling statement. 
To many it will seem the statement of a fanatic. To all such I 
can make but one reply. Understanding the difficulties in so 
doing, and exercising the circumspection necessary, investigate 
faithfully for yourself; and you will say that the half was never 
told. Garfield said; — U I never meet a ragged boy of the 
street without feeling that I may owe him a salute, for I know 
not what possibilities may be buttoned up under his shabby coat. 
When I meet you in the full flush of mature life, I see nearly 
all there is of you ; but among these boys are the great men of the 
future, — the heroes of the next generation, the philosophers, 
the statesmen, the philanthropists, the great reformers and 
moulders of the next age." How often is the keen-eyed 
physician saddened by the knowledge that underneath these 



458 SELF- ABUSE. 

coats are buttoned up shamefaced secrets in direct antagonism 
to all these possibilities of large worthWid usefulness. 

The physician sees these things with compassion, not with 
contempt . I do not trace th^se pagegJfe one who would bring 
in a stern indictment against the youfh. They have my high 
respect ; they are a noble class* I think of them as sinned 
against, rather than sinning. If a child were not taught what it 
might put into its mouth, what to eat and what not to eat ; if it 
were not led to discriminate between food and poison, and its 
life paid the penalty, public opinion and the law would take the 
matter in hand. But a son may become a mental and physical 
weakling, or go to the mad-house, or die the death of a suicide, for 
the lack of parental instruction which he has a right to expect, 
and the community sees in it nothing beyond an afflictive and 
mysterious Providence. 

If any indictments are to be brought, they should be first 
against the doctors ; for one who understands the subject and 
the successful handling of the disorder induced, is a rarity. The 
doctors themselves as a class are at this point uninformed and 
unfurnished, and the youth who sincerely desires help and coun- 
sel, is far too often right in his conjecture that from the family 
physician he will get neither the one nor the other adequate to 
his need, and may quite possibly be met with an actual rebuff. 
Next in order of blameworthiness stand the fathers. What 
they have learned in the hard school of experience, or other- 
wise, they never think of teaching their sons, that their feet 
come not into slippery places. They wave no red light across 
this downward track of all others the most travelled. They 
leave unsprung the traps set for youthful ignorance and indis- 
cretion. As well trust to your boy's intellect to teach him that 
fire-arms are dangerous, as to trust to his innocence to keep 
him from physical excesses. Whatever your theories may 
chance to be of what, in the nature of things, ought to be, the 
great insurmountable fact remains that you must pound it into 



SELF ABUSE. 459 

your otherwise bright boy, with precept upon precept, that guns 
carelessly handled go off and kill people ; and strange as it may 
seem to your fond paternal heart, your boy has been born into 
a world of sin and suffering, and guileless and innocent as he 
may appear in your eyes, you must teach him purity, teach him 
manliness, teach him moral, mental and^physical self-control. 
You must teach him not to fill his stomach with the green apples 
of the orchard, nor fill his heart and poison his body with the 
deceptive apples of Sodom. 

If any blame attaches to the teachers, it is to those of private, 
rather than to those of public schools. Teachers of private 
schools are very careless in the matter of solitary vice among 
their boys, apparently taking it for granted that, as they come 
from favored homes, there is no call for any supervision in this 
matter. The teachers of our public schools, on the contrary, 
seem to be very generally awake to the magnitude and gravity 
of the evil, and are faithful in doing all in their power to check 
it. It has been my happy experience to uniformly meet with 
intelligent and earnest response, whenever I have sought to avail 
myself of whatever knowledge of the matter might be gained 
from their superior opportunities for observation. One teacher 
of long experience writes ; — 

u I rejoice that your attention, as a medical man, has been 
called to this subject especially, and that an effort is being 
made by you to save the boys. May God guide, direct and 
assist you in your work, and may you be the means in His- 
hands of doing much good to the many boys of our land, is my 
earnest prayer. 

"This is indeed an extremely delicate and unpleasant subject. 
It is repugnant in all its bearings. Yet as this sin prevails to 
such an alarming extent, it becomes the duty of every Christian 
man and woman to speak against it, and without false modesty. 
I have so long desired and prayed that in some way I might be 



m 



400 SELF-ABUSE. 

the means of helping to lift the youth up to a higher, nobler, 
and purer life, that I dare not refuse this opportunity. 

" In complying with your request, I will relate circumstances 
that have occurred during my teaching, though not occurring in 
any one school, county, or state. Much will be withheld, as the 
statements might seem incredible ; doubtless some facts herein 
given can hardly be appreciated by those whose attention has 
not been called to the subject, or those who have had but little 
opportunity to observe the habits of small children. It must be 
remembered that a teacher's field for observation of children 
and youth, is quite unlike that of either a parent or physician. 
A medical man deals with these cases, more especially, at later 
periods in life, when health begins to fail. He is familiar with 
the results of this practice ; but the beginnings, and earlier 
stages of masturbation, come more directly under the observa- 
tion of the teacher than any other person. 

" In many respects a teacher has a better opportunity than 
parents to watch the developments of children, and to note the 
mental progress and moral tendency of youth. From my own 
observations and experience in teaching, and in conversation 
with many other teachers, these views have been corroborated. 
I give it as my opinion that masturbation and sexual precocity 
are common among children ; that the majority -of parents 
are not aware of its prevalence; that a large proportion of 
parents give no instruction to their children. This is founded 
upon the fact that but few adults can say that, in early life, they 
had instruction upon this subject; and I might count upon my 
lingers all the children who have admitted to me that their par- 
ents had taught them that this was wrong. 

"Also, that very small children, in learning the different parts 
of the body, will feel of the hands, toes, etc., and in this way 
discover their genital organs ; and a tickling sensation causes 
them to continue the act, which, if permitted to be repeated, 
develops into masturbation as they grow older. That many 



SELF-ABCJ8E. 461 

children learn this, when very small and innocent, by the con- 
taminating influence of other children, there can be no doubt. 
That others are taught this by older boys and men, not inno- 
cent, there can be no doubt. But of another class of boys, 
what can be said ? The Bible is the best text-book and code of 
morals, as well as guide to a higher life. In this we read, 
' Lust when it is conceived, bringeth forth sin. ' ' In sin did 
my mother conceive me. ' ' The iniquities of the fathers shall 
be visited upon the children,' etc. 

' ' In view of the prevalence of this vice and its. sad effects, 
it is the duty of physicians to inform young men upon this sub- 
ject, and to teach them some things young men ought to 
know, before the vigor of youth, and strength of manhood, is 
wasted. It is as much the duty of instructors of youth to teach the 
boys the value of the mind and how to preserve it, as it is their duty 
to develop the mind and store it with useful knowledge. Character 
is worth more than book knowledge. If the capacities of youth 
can be largely measured by pre-natal education, and their moral 
tendencies are influenced by inheritance, a great responsibility 
rests with parents. May God speed the day when the purity ot 
secret life will be stamped upon the faces of the youth ; and 
' Holiness unto the Lord ' shall be written in the hearts of the 
parents." 

Again I say that I cannot, in unmeasured terms, condemn 
the boy who fails to make the distinction between use and 
abuse. Keep clearly before your mind who it is that devised 
the reproductive apparatus, and made the accomplishment of 
its function the greatest of physical delights ; that as the heart 
may be full of all uncleanness or the fountain of all that is 
worth living for, so this department has ministries of good as well 
as possibilities of evil. This is demonstrable even though we 
rule out children and the family. What is the effect of castra- 
tion? "In most of these instances, and probably in all where 
the mutilation has been suffered when young, a decided effect 



462 SELF-ABUSE. 

on the mental and moral character is observed. Eunuchs are 
proverbial for their cruel, crafty, unsympathizing dispositions ; 
the mental powers are feeble; and the physical strength is 
inferior. They lack both courage and endurance, and supply 
their place with cunning and mercilessness. They prove, 
indeed, that in their want of that power which connects 
them with posterity, they have lost something necessary to the 
development of the best parts of their nature. This should teach 
us that it is a wise provision which stimulates our duty to the 
future by the reward of present pleasure."* 

This function and power, then, in its right possession, is a 
real means of grace to the boy and man, ennobling the charac 
ter, and developing the real fibre within it. This possession 
comes to the boy in an imperceptible evolution and develop- 
ment, until he suddenly makes the discovery of his added pow- 
ers. He may make this discovery by tuition or accident. It 
may be through the corrupt teaching of companions, or some 
one of an infinite number of possible accidents ; just as a young 
man of admirable training has said to me since I began penning 
this chapter, while deploring his slight self-abuse for a brief 
period in boyhood. He said he had learned the habit at school. 
Not liking to ask to go out when he needed to empty the blad- 
der, his hand would go into his pocket to help him "hold in," 
and so the discovery was made and the habit formed. 

Uninstructed by parent or physician, the boy comes to a 
knowledge of his power, and of a means of indulging an appe- 
tite. His father may take him aside, and speak to him of the 
possibilities of public life and private enterprise, and confide to 
him his hope that he may become a man of affairs, and urge 
upon him that he make the best use of his time to the attain- 
ment of this end. But to take him aside and call his attention 
to the homes with which he is acquainted, and tell him of the 
hope that his home may be of homes the sweetest, that the 

*Dr. Naphey's "Transmission of Life." 



SELF-ABUSE. 463 

noblest of wives may be its center, that the dimpled arms of 
fariest children may one day twine about his neck, — to show 
him where the dangers lie which may take all this from him, 
as well as his possibilities in business, or letters, or statesman- 
ship, to urge him that he keep his manhood pure and unde- 
fined, and worthy of all this, — to do this is an .unheard of inno- 
vation. 

Ah, Fathers, Fathers, you take your sons up into an exceeding 
high mountain, and show them all the kingdoms of this world ; 
T^ut fail to direct their gaze toward the little kingdom of heaven 
which this world contains, or to hint at the lurking devil which 
may take it from them. A single word of sympathy from those who 
know all the way, is worth so much to the boy to whom all is mys- 
tery and guess-work. As I write I see before me the image of a 
mother, and about the matchless mother-face there is a halo like 
that around the faces of the saints in the old master paint- 
ings, only it is so much more radiant that I wonder the old mas- 
ters were so far from the reality. And she takes her wilful, 
curly-headed boy into her lap, and looking down into his eyes 
she tells him that she hopes that someday he will have the 
dearest little wife in all the world ; and that if he grows up to 
be the man that she would have him be, she will envy that lit- 
tle wife. How little she suspects, as he slips down out of her 
lap, that her mother-faith has so far outrun her knowledge of 
the world, that she has given him an anchor which shall save 
him from shipwreck in deep waters, as the hurrying stream of 
life bears him toward pitiless reefs of whose existence she never 
even guessed. 

Trust the boys that they be men in miniature, and that it is not 
meet that their innocence should, like that of infants, be measured 
by their ignorance, but that it should be instructed, and their 
nobility made twice noble by the confidence they feel that you 
have reposed in them. If the boy thinks at all, he knows that 
the possession of the power is proper, of the appetite is natural 



464: SELF-ABUSE. 

and right. He has found a means of gratifying this desire- 
Uninstructed, it never occurs to him that this procedure will 
bring mental and physical disaster. Why should it? I confess 
that as a physician I cannot answer the question to my own sat- 
isfaction. With the expenditure of nervous force and valuable 
fluid constantly in view, I still cannot see an adequate cause for 
the effect. If the idea of the ancients, that the seminal fluid 
was composed of drops of the cerebral substance transmitted 
through the spinal cord, were tenable, and modern anatomy 
and physiology showed it to be the fact, if it were really a stil- 
licidium, cerebri, then the moral and intellectual decadence and 
physical deterioration would seem to have sufficient cause. But 
this is not the case. 

Yet however we may question the cause, there is certainty, 
grim enough, regarding the effect. The boy, apprehending no 
danger, indulges in the practice of masturbation until the 
beginnings of the impending spoliation are upon him. The first 
noticeable change is a certain fugitive quality which seems 
to pervade the entire boy. Before, he was frank, open, 
always to be depended upon, and you felt that you knew him, 
and knew just where you would find him upon any given ques- 
tion or emergency that might arise. Now, you have a painful 
consciousness that you do not know him. Naturally quick and 
decisive, he is now sluggish and hesitant ; from boldness, he 
has passed to a certain slinking manner unworthy the honorable 
name of timidity. He has dropped his natural gregariousness, 
and assumed habits of solitude, and his eyes have become 
dreamy. He meets nothing with the old time squareness of 
decision ; in its place is an omnipresent furtiveness in look 
and gesture and carriage which leads you to think that some 
change is going on, and you are in doubt as to what the boy 
will u make of himself." Let me tell you that he needs your 
wisest, kindest fatherly sympathy and counsel, or he will make 
si iip wreck of himself 



SELF- ABUSE . 4:65 

" Sad as the effects," says one of the wisest teachers I know 
" of this evil are upon the children and youth physically, a much 
sadder view is presented when we closely examine its mental 
and moral effects. It is generally admitted by intelligent people 
that masturbation injures the minds of adults. May it not be 
equally true of small children, and its results as manifest? It 
is true there seems to be a premature development of mind in 
some cases, — may this not be regarded as an unhealthy condition. 

"A physician is supposed to form his opinion of the secret 
life of a youth from his physical condition ; but an observing 
teacher judges as quickly and correctly, perhaps, from the men- 
tal condition and moral tendencies. Let a teacher become once 
aroused upon this subject by marked cases of masturbation 
among the dear little ones ; let her note the progress and develop- 
ment of these children through the different grades as com- 
pared with other children of equal ability, and she has the key 
which would unlock the mystery that hangs around many a 
darling son. 

U A former pupil, over twelve years of age, — a dear good boy 
— was a source of anxiety to his parents in that, while he had 
more than usual natural ability, he failed to make proper prog- 
ress. He was apparently in good health, though he lacked 
vitality ; and at times was sullen and contrary. His mind 
seemed dwarfed, or strangely undeveloped, in many respects, 
for a boy of his age. In conversation with his parents the 
father remarked, ( I cannot understand that boy.' To the 
question, 'Did you ever inquire into his secret life;' the father 
replied, ' No, have you any idea that there is anything wrong 
in the life of my boy ? ' Being convinced that his mind denoted 
it, he soon found a way to the heart of his son, and sought to 
right a wrong that had been taught by older boys at school, 
some years before. 

u There are but few people, comparatively, who can exercise 

(30) 



466 



SELF- ABUSE. 



concentration of mind to any great extent; and fewer yet, per- 
haps, who have will-power sufficient to exercise self-control, even 
in small matters. This may be due, largely, to faults in our 
early training, or education. It is surprising, however, to what 
an extent youth, and even small children, may be drilled in 
school to fasten and hold the mind upon what they are doing, 
regardless of what is going on around them. Also the power 
of will — self-control — they will manifest by drill. Now when 
children, in a supposed normal condition, cannot be developed 
by daily drill to concentrate the mind, and exercise self-control, 
a doubt hangs over the secret life of that child. If one fails to 
detect anything wrong with the child, may it not be safe to 
allow the doubt to hang over the? purity ot the lives of the par- 
ents? 

"In one case, where a child seemed to exercise but little 
strength of mind during these drills, I was informed that the 
mother, prior to the birth of this child, had resorted to drugs as 
a means of abortion but failed in her purpose. In cases where 
there is a manifestly impure, corrupt tendency on the part of 
parents, who use obscene language, enjoy telling and listening 
to low stories, etc., it is safe to allow a doubt to hang over the 
lives of such parents. Could they carefully watch the develop- 
ments in little children just from their homes — their mothers' 
arms — they would realize and appreciate these statements as in 
no other way, and would feel a deeper responsibility in regard 
to purity of thought and act. As with adults morally, so with 
youth, the tendency is ever downward . Becoming indolent and 
idle, 'Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.' 
The powers of self-respect and self-control are weakened. They 
easily yield to temptation ; and unless rescued while young, 
many a boy will be beyond the power of human influence, such 
}s the demoralizing tendency of this practice." 

Harshness and severity will be worse than useless. Some 
one has wittily said that we punish our children for their resem 



SELF-ABUSE. 467 

blances to ourselves. Your boy may have inherited a dispro- 
portion of nerve and muscle from yourself, and have, therefore, 
less ease of self-control and greater liability to suffer from excess. 
Deal gently with him, and be vigilant, for the danger is great. 
If this thing goes on, he will drift into any form of nervous 
disease to which he happens to be liable. "In his classical 
writings on Diseases of the Spinal Cord, Erb declares that sex- 
ual excesses and irregularities occupy a prominent position in 
the predisposition to, and production of, many spinal affections, 
among which may be mentioned spinal irritation, neurasthenia, 
chronic meningitis and myelitis, softening, and inflammation of 
the anterior horns, or polio-myelitis ; and this view is held by 
many other distinguished authors, as Rosenthal, Hammond, 
and Romberg.* Dr. Hammondf mentions venereal excesses as 
a cause of suppurative inflammation of the brain, spinal conges- 
tion, spinal anaemia, spinal hemorrhage, spinal paralysis of 
adults, progressive locomotor ataxia, non-inflammatory soften- 
ing of the spinal cord, epilepsy, hysteria, and catalepsy. Dr. 
HartJ makes the same mention regarding the causes of epilepsy, 
chorea, catalepsy, general paralysis of the insane, progressive 
locomotor ataxia, neuralgia, neuralgia trigemini, sciatica, angina 
pectoris, gastralgia, spinal irritation, hypochondriasis, melan- 
cholia, mania, and dementia. 

Take, for instance, epilepsy. But few realize to what an 
extent masturbation is responsible for the epileptiform spasm. 
Dr. Hammond tabulates ^e hundred and seventy-two cases as 
coming under his own observation. Regarding the age at which 
it appeared, his table reads: 

Under ten years, ----- 60 

Between ten and twenty years, - - - 329 
Between twenty and forty-five years, - - 143 
Over forty-five years, 40 

Total - 572 

*Gross. f Diseases of the Nervous System. ^Diseases of the Nervous System. 



468 SELF-ABUSE . 

" It is thus seen that the period of life between ten and twenty 
years, is that at which epilepsy is most apt to occur. The expe- 
rience of others is to the same effect." Is not this showing sug- 
gestive ? Eemembering the difficulty of getting at this cause, 
look at his table of causation. I find first, that no exciting cause 
could be assigned in 177 — draw your own conclusions. I find 
35 set down to fright, 17 to anxiety, 30 to grief, 48 to over-men- 
tal exertion, 21 to dentition, 33 to indigestion. What was the 
matter with the ancestors of these victims, that they trans- 
mitted to their offspring such shattered nervous systems as to 
be thrown into epilepsy by such causes as these ? Think of the- 
physiological process of dentition being a cause of 21 
cases. Verily, the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the 
children's teeth are set on edge. 

But to go on. I find charged up to venereal and sexual 
excesses 60, to syphilis 13, to other derangements of the repro- 
ductive apparatus 56, while blows on the head, and other 
wounds, falls, sunstrokes, scarlet fever, measles, diptheria, 
malaria, etc., divide the remaining 82 cases between them. 
Comment is superfluous. Dr. Hart places self-abuse first in his 
enumeration of the most common exciting causes. An able 
physician, ex-professor in one of the best medical schools in, 
this couutry, says, in a recent letter to the superintendent of an* 
insane asylum ; — "I have recently cured a case of epilepsy, in 
a lad of three years of age, due to masturbation. At least he 
performed all the tactics of that manual." This is, of course, 
a case of sexual precocity. The child should bo conscious of 
no such function. But, unfortunately, such precocity is not 
rare. An honored and veteran teacher gives this testimony ; — 
" The prevalence of masturbation and sexual precocity among 
children, is much more common than is generally believed. 

u If a journal in full had been kept, of the many cases of 
masturbation and sexual precocity which have come to my 
knowledge while teaching, together with conversations I have 



SELF-ABUSE. 469 

had with children and youth upon this subject; also peculiar 
developments in children in these respects, it would be quite a 
large book of itself. 

" I could hardly have believed from the lips of another, what 
I have witnessed among children in school. There is probably 
no school of auy size without more or less of this evil among 
the pupils. It has been suggested by teachers that it might be 
an epidemic, for if one open, bad case is seen and known, it 
spreads like wildfire. I have taught a term, yes, a year, with 
but little trouble in this respect among the pupils. Again, in 
the same building, same grade of pupils, it has been so prev- 
alent that one could hardly fail, if looking for it, to detect one 
or more practicing this evil in school. I have witnessed in a 
school of sixty, whose average age was under six years, fifteen 
pupils practicing masturbation at the same moment in school. 

u A teacher who had taught successfully in first primary 
flchook for several years, said to me one day, after her atten- 
tion had been called to this subject, ' I must quit teaching. I 
can now detect this evil in school every day. The responsi- 
bility is greater than I can bear.' Shortly afterwards one little 
boy from her room died in spasms. 

u This vice may be practiced in the presence of teacher or 
parents and the child not observed by them, unless they are 
-awake to the importance of protecting the little ones from an 
impure secret life. After teaching several years, I was startled 
to find that, little innocent children, just entering school, had 
already commenced a practice which might result in their ruin. 
The construction of pants for small boys is such that they can 
-easily practice -this openly. Older boys are more sly, but an 
observing teacher who has noticed the little ones, can easily 
detect them. 

" Still older boys resort to the privies and back yards. Have 
known boys to habitually remain after school and play in this 
way, until it came to the knowledge of teachers. Just here let 



470 SELF-ABUSE. 

me say that the out-buildings at school may be regarded as 
positively unavoidable nuisances — sinks of iniquity — where 
obscene language is used, low stories told, masturbation taught^ 
and in many instances, sexual intercourse is practiced. 

"A pupil just entering the teens, whose first lessons had 
been learned in an out-building at school some years previous,, 
was asked, ' How many times a day do you practice solitary 
vice ? ' The reply was, ' I have often done it four times in one 
day.' This child was a Sabbath school pupil — from a Christian 
home, — an intelligent and intellectual family. It is a mistaken 
idea that this practice is confined to low families. Many 
instances might be given of children addicted to this habit, from 
the best of Christian homes. 

"A teacher who realizes her responsibility to a * higher 
law,' as well as that of the common school, will listen to some 
sad tales from her pupils, if she seeks to enter into their hearts 
and help them to abandon bad habits. One will tell of an own 
uncle who taught this, while the child sat upon his knee, at 
home. Another, of a hired man's teachings, while the parents 
were away and the child, at the time, about four years old ; and 
that ever afterwards it had been a secret sin, although unknown 
to the parents. This last circumstance was related by a child 
just entering the teens. To the question, 'Do you know this 
is wrong?' — the reply was, 'Yes.' 'Who told you it was* 
wrong?' was then asked. 'Nobody.' 'Then how did you 
learn it was wrong ? ' 'Well,' said the child, sobbing, 'one 
day at home I was out in the privy doing this, and I had done- 
it so many times that day — all at once something seemed to 
tell me 'Thou God seest me, ' and I always felt * it was wrong- 
after that.' 

"One child, twelve years old, gave the names of nineteen 
children who practiced masturbation, and some of them had 
had sexual intercourse with their sisters. Have known many 
instances where children have had sexual intercourse — this gen- 



SELF-ABUSE. 471 

erally takes place at home — and several instances where this 
was true of children under five years of age ; a few cases where 
boys have attempted to force little girls. I once asked a child 
whom I knew had had sexual intercourse, how they made known 
their desires to each other. The reply was, 'We say, let's go 
out to the barn and do it.' Children who talk these things 
over together, know what is meant by k itS 

" Some small children are very sly in the practice of mastur- 
bation, and can only be detected by general appearances ; but 
they will confess much that is done at home of which the 
parents are unaware. Others, one can hardly fail to observe if 
awake to duty. One of the worst cases I ever knew was a boy 
about six years of age. He would write numbers with one hand 
on his slate, and the more absorbed he became with his lessons, 
the faster he would excite himself with the other hand. This 
was done openly, in view of any one who chanced to be in the 
room . I have seen him so excited he could not sit on his seat, 
and in all manner of writhings ; yet apparently studying all the 
time. You could go to him and observe every position and 
emotion, and he so absorbed and excited as to be wholly uncon- 
scious of your presence. I have had him stand out on the floor 
facing the school ; hoping, at least, to arouse his pride until 
some other power or influence could be brought to bear upon 
him — but the result was the same. I saw his mother ; had her 
close the opening in his pants; but he soon made another. 
Every moral influence that could be thought of by superintend- 
ent and experienced teachers, was tried. But without success. 
In the higher grades, he was one of those restless, wayward 
boys, who cause a teacher so much care and anxiety. 

" Let a teacher listen to the sad tales of children, and find a 
few such cases as this, in school, with pupils whom she dearly 
loves, and she will awake to duty and responsibility as never 
before. She will seek for the cause of this and the possible 
prevention. She will note the effects, physical, mental, and 



472 SELF-ABUSE. 

moral ; and there will be moments, in view of eternity, and 
her powerlessness to rescue the children and youth, when in 
her inmost soul she will cry out to the Living God, i Is there no 
balm in Gilead ; is there no physician there ? ' " 

No work has held a more honorable place in medical litera- 
ture, than Dr. Watson's Theory and Practice. His testimony 
is; — "There are certain vices which are. justly considered as 
influential in aggravating, and even in creating, a disposition to 
epilepsy; debauchery of all kinds; the habitual indulgence in 
intoxicating liquors ; and above all, the most powerful predis- 
posing cause of any, not due to inheritance, is masturbation — a 
vice which it is painful and difficult even to allude to in this 
manner, and still more difficult to make the subject of inquiry 
with a patient . But there is too much reason to be certain that 
many cases of epilepsy owe their origin to this wretched and 
degrading habit, and more than one or two patients have vol- 
untarily confessed to me their conviction that they had thus 
brought upon themselves the epileptic paroxysms for which they 
sought my advice." And Dr. H. C. Wood is but too true 
when he says; — u The history of epilepsy is but too often that 
of a slow but irresistibly progressive failure of mental power, 
until it may be the boy disappears in the gloom of the idiot 
asylum, finally to die of a pneumonia or a fever." 

Understand that neither the presence of epilepsy, nor any of 
the other disorders enumerated, is necessarily an evidence of 
masturbation. Far be it from me to fasten any such stigma upon 
the unfortunate victims of disease. Mahomet was an epileptic, 
yet his great career was the farthest possible remove from that 
of one guilty of self-abuse. So long as a single case is to be 
found, due to other causes, you have no right to look upon any 
sufferer and say within yourself that here is a guilty one. 
Strive that those in your care may be kept from evil ; but do 
not go about asking the pharisaical question, " Who did sin, 
this man or his parents ? " 



SELF ABUSE . 473 

Take insanity, that most perfect type of blasted manhood. 
Does there exist any relation between it and masturbation ? 
Where does self-abuse, carried to its final development, leave its 
devotee ? Insanity is the most dread disorder to which mortal 
man is liable. Does masturbation ever carry him to this fright- 
ful ultim,atum\ Let us examine carefully the testimony of 
observation and experience upon this point ; for, insanity being 
the extremest expression of the disease liability of man, and 
the greater always including the less, if it be shown that self- 
abuse frequently ends in insanity, there will be no need of 
expending time in the citation of facts and figures proving it to 
be potent in the causation of almost every minor disorder. 
That would be a necessary deduction. 

What, then, do we find the testimony to be regarding insan- 
ity? Dr. Gershom II. Hill, Superintendent of the Iowa Hos- 
pital for the Insane at Independence, in an opinion kindly given 
me, writes; — " Masturbation always injures the mind, and fre- 
quently is,an important factor in producing insanity." 

Dr. Samuel Worcester says; — "Probably to the unprofes- 
sional mind the habit of self-abuse or masturbation would at 
once suggest itself as a fruitful cause of insanity, as is indeed 
the case. All alienist physicians bear evidence to the power 
and prevalence of the pernicious habit. No vice can be more 
easily initiated, none can be eradicated with greater difficulty. 
It is, however, true that a great difference of opinion exists 
-among authors as to the frequency with which this habit should 
be considered a cause or an effect of insanity ; a difference of 
opinion due in part to the difficulty of obtaining trustworthy 
evidence from the patient or his friends."* 

Dr. A. E. Small, President of one of Chicago's medical 
schools, says; — "Bodily diseases alone are quite enough to 
utter a warning to the onanist. But they are trifling when 
eompared with the awful consequences upon the soul. The 

*Insanity and its Treatment. 



474: SELF-ABUSE. 

mind succumbs, childishness and imbecility are its attributes, 
and he becomes a moral monstrosity ; thank heaven, monsters 
cannot propagate, neither physical nor moral, for manhood is 
gone, virility destroyed, and the vessel is a complete wreck in 
the sea of human infirmities. * * * One-tenth 

of all the inmates of our insane asylums are of this class 
of secret sinners, who still continue the vile habit of self- 
abuse, though brought to spiritual and moral bankruptcy.. 
Insanity, hallucinations, loss of sight and hearing, in a moral 
point of view form the climax, characteristic of the consequen- 
ces, and withal these idiotic victims of sexual abuse embrace 
every secret opportunity to instinctively cultivate and practice 
the vile habit of onanism."* 

The late Dr. John Ware, of Boston, of whose worth no one 
needs to be reminded, wrote; — "Among the effects of this 
habit, in ordinary cases, we notice an impaired nutrition of the 
body ; a diminution of the rotundity which belongs to childhood 
and youth ; a general lassitude and languor, with weakness of 
the limbs and back ; indisposition and incapacity for study or 
labor ; dullness of apprehension ; a deficient power of atten- 
tion ; dizziness ; headaches ; pains in the sides, back, and 
limbs; affections of the eyes. In cases of extreme indulgence, 
these symptoms become more strongly marked, and are fol- 
lowed by others. The emaciation becomes excessive; the 
bodily powers become more completely prostrated ; the mem- 
ory and the whole mind partake in the ruin ; and idiocy or 
insanity, in their most intractable forms, close the train of 
evils. It not unfrequently happens that, from the consequences 
of this vice when carried to an extreme, not even repentance 
and reformation liberate the unhappy victim. 

u Let no one say that we overstate the extent of this evil, or 
exaggerate its importance to the health and morals of the 
young. It is in vain that we attempt to stay the licentiousness 

*Decline of Manhood. 



SELF-ABUSE. 475 

of youth, when we leave, unchecked in their growth, those 
seeds of the vice which are sown in the bosom of the child. 
If there is impurity in the fountain, there will be impurity in 
the stream which flows from it. To what purpose is it that we 
make and execute laws against open licentiousness ; that we 
arm ourselves with policemen and spies ; that we prosecute the 
keepers of brothels; that we hunt the wretched prostitute from 
the dram-shop to the cellar, from the cellar to the jail, from the 
jail to her grave % This does not purify society ; it stops merely 
one external development of a corruption which still lurks, and 
cankers, and festers within. The licentiousness of the brothel 
is clear and open in its character ; nobody defends it ; every one 
is aware of its seductions and its dangers ; the young man who 
enters the house of shame knows that he does it at the peril of 
reputation, and under the dread of disease. But the other 
form of licentiousness is secret from its very nature. It may 
be practiced without suspicion ; there is little fear of discovery 
or of shame. It lurks in the school, the academy, the college, 
the workshop, ay, even in the nursery. No age and no pro-' 
fession are without examples of the dreadful ruin it 
can accomplish. Begun in childhood, and sometimes even 
in infancy, it is indulged without a thought of its nature or 
effects. Gradually it winds around its unhappy victim a chain 
which he finds it impossible to break. Continued for years, he- 
may wake, at last, to a sense of his degradation, but perhaps too- 
late ; for it has often happened that neither the pressure of dis- 
ease, the stings of conscience, a strong sense of religious obli- 
gation, nor even the fear of death, have been sufficient to enable 
the unhappy sufferer to break from the habit which enthralls 
him. 

"None but those who go behind the scenes of life, and are 
permitted to enter the prison-house of the human heart, can 
know how many are the terrible secrets which lie hid beneath 
the fair and even face of society, as we see it in the common 



476 SELF- ABUSE. 

intercourse of the world. With how many are their early days 
a struggle for life and death between principle and passion, the 
spirit and the flesh ! With how many are those days spent in 
yielding and repenting, in reluctant indulgences followed by 
agonies of remorse and shame! With how many does the con- 
science become callous, and vice a second nature ! How often 
has it happened that natures, really fair and pure, have gradu- 
ally become tarnished and dim, and the highest hopes of youth 
been defeated ! How often has it happened that young men of 
rare promise, of whose success great expectations have been 
entertained, have suddenly failed by the way, have seemed pre- 
maturely worn down by study, and forced to relinquish the 
career on which they were entering with the brightest prospects ! 
Little is it suspected by anxious friends, or a sympathizing pub- 
lic, in such cases, that it is not too exclusive devotion to study, 
that it is not midnight toil; that it is not errors of diet, or 
want of air or exercise, that have withered their energies, and 
unnerved their frame. There may be a nearer and a more inev- 
itable destroyer than these."* 

My friend, Dr. Seldon H. Talcott, Superintendent of the 
New York State Asylum for the Insane, at Middletown, writes; — 
* * "It affords me pleasure to aid you as far as pos- 

sible in your commendable work of issuing a warning to young 
men against the dangers of masturbation. * * Mas- 
turbation plays a prominent part in the causation of insanity ; 
its tendencies are toward the weakening of the mental faculties, 
and the introduction of dementia. * * * For sta- 
tistics I refer you to my reports. By these reports you will 
learn that masturbation stands among the first three or four 
causes of insanity. These causes have been carefully investi- 
gated."! * * * In an article from his pen in a 

*True Relation of the Sexes. 

fFrom these reports I glean the following.— I find in the report dated 
January, 1878, that the total number of males admitted within the year was 
43— that in the table of causes 13 are set down as unknown, 7 as due to mastur- 



SELF- ABUSE. 477" 

recent number of a medical journal, this statement is made ; — 
" A final cause inducing the insane diathesis lies in that grow- 
ing and deplorable social malady — the premature and excessive 
excitement of the sexual organism. It is scarcely needful to argue- 
the fact that masturbation is alarmingly prevalent among the 
young. The books are full of printed proofs ; and the appear- 
ance of the young, in our schools and on the streets, is an open 
page of the most indisputable evidence. Most of the insane in 
asylums, who are yet adolescent, present histories and marks 
of this damning practice." 

In notes furnished by himself, of his lectures before a Phila- 
delphia medical class, he says; — u Masturbatic dementia is the 
result of that prevalent, brain-destroying vice, familiarly known 
as 'self-abuse.' * * * Cases of masturbatic dementia are 
usually intractable. They must be cured, if at all, during the 
incipient stages of the disease. The victims are frequently 
robust in physique, at least until they become exhausted by long 
practice of the vice which so surely wrecks the mental forces. 
* * These persons often profess a great love for books. 
They retire to their rooms or to some secluded forest shade, 
ostensibly for purposes of study, but in reality to indulge in 
lecherous imaginations, lewd thoughts, and peccant practices. 

" Dull-eyed and dreamy students, who prefer their bedrooms 
to the play ground, may almost always be suspected of onanis- 
tic habits." Again, in another journal; — u There is 
this to be considered, in our treatment of masturbatic insanity, 
that cases of this sort which reach an asylum are usually so far 
gone in their terrible ways as to be non-amenable to any treat- 
ment." 

bation, while the next highest number attributed to any single cause is 5, which, 
is set down opposite "Heredity." In that year, after the unknown, mastur- 
bation headed the list in the number of its victims. In the 1879 report, there 
were admitted, males. 42. Causes, heredity and predisposition 11, masturba- 
tion 7— that year masturbation stood t econd on the list. In the i860 report, 
—admitted, males, 67. Causes,— unknown 21, heredity and predisposition 
14, masturbation 11. In the 1881 report, — admitted, males, 76. Causes, — 
unknown 15, heredity and predisposition 14, overwork 12, masturbation 9. 



478 SELF-ABUSE. 

Dr. William A, Hammond asserts; — " Masturbation and 
sexual excesses are also to be placed among the etiological fac- 
tors of insanity. In young persons, their influence is often 
decidedly manifested. Persons of mature age do not appear to 
incur, except as regards paralysis, any noticeable liability to 
mental derangement, unless they are practiced to an inordinate 
extent, and then they are probably the symptoms of an already 
existing mental disease. In youth, acute mania, melancholia 
with stupor, or more generally hebephrenia, are produced. 
Sexual excesses are, however, among the most common causes 
of general paralysis. On this point there is no difference of 
opinion among writers. In my own experience I have abund- 
ant evidence of its power as a factor in producing this dis- 
ease."* 

Dr. Roberts Bartholow says; — "The most serious mental 
effects are produced by masturbation. This vice, commenced 
at the period of puberty, interferes seriously with the develop- 
ment of the brain and the evolution of the mental faculties. 
* * * * Several of the most characteristic cases which 
have happened under my observation correspond to the delvr 
sional insanity of Bucknill and Tuke. Many writers are dis- 
posed to underrate the importance of this tendency in sperma- 
torrhoea. To the influence of quack advertisements and popu- 
lar works, which of course, greatly exaggerate the evils of this 
disease, is ascribed the melancholy, the hypochondriasis, and 
other mental disorders, which occur in the course of it. The 
statistics of any of our large insane asylums well illustrate the 
influence of masturbation in the production of mental aliena- 
tion. We have already given the opinion of Romberg on this 
point. Mr. Holmes Coote, in a discussion which followed Dr. 
Drysdale's paper on the 'Medical aspects of Prostitution,' 
read before the Harveian Society of London, remarked that 
{ he still entertained the opinion that there were worse evils 

* Treatise on Insanity. 



SELF-ABUSE. 479 

appertaining to human weakness than prostitution. He had 
opportunities of witnessing the fact that among the young there 
was no cause of insanity more common than indulging inhabits 
which he would not further particularize, but which were known 
to result in the most complete bodily and mental prostration.' 

"Dr. John P. Gray, the distinguished Superintendent of the 
State Asylum at Utica, New York, thus speaks of the influ- 
ence of masturbation in the production of insanity; — 'The rec- 
ords of this institution show five hundred and twenty-one cases 
admitted directly attributable to this vice, and I am well con- 
vinced that tke number is greatly understated.' We might add 
confirmatory testimony from a variety of sources, but the fore- 
going is sufficient for our purpose."* 

This is the testimony of the physicians of our own country. 
What do they of other countries testify ? 

Dr. T. S. Coulston puts himself on record in the Edinburg 
Medical Journal^ as of the opinion that "the period of great- 
est danger of insanity in Scotland, is that of adolescence." In 
the special department of insanity, weightier names cannot be 
found in Great Britain, than those of Drs. Henry Maudsley, 
and Bucknill and Tuke. Dr. Maudsley says ; — 4 ' The form of men- 
tal derangement produced by self-abuse — the Insanity of mas- 
turbation — furnishes a good example of a chronic mania in 
which there are no acute symptoms, the onset of the disease 
being most gradual. The patient becomes offensively egotistic ; 
he is fall of self-feeling and self conceit ; insensible to the claims 
of others upon him and of his duties to them ; interested only 
in hypochondriacal^ watching his morbid sensations and feel- 
ings. His mental energy is sapped, and though he has extrav 
agant pretensions, and often speaks of great projects engen- 
dered of his conceit, he never works systematically for any aim, 
but exhibits an incredible vacillation of conduct, and spends his 
days in indolent and self-suspicious self-brooding. His relatives 

* Spermatorrhoea. 



480 SELF-ABUSE. 

he thinks hostile to him, because they do not show the interest 
in his sufferings which he craves, nor yield sufficiently to his 
pretensions. As matters get worse, the general suspicion of 
the hostility of people takes more definite form, and delusions 
spring up that persons speak offensively of him, or watch him 
in the street, or comment upon what passes in his mind, or play 
tricks upon him by electricity or mesmerism, or in some other 
mysterious way. Still he professes the most exalted moral or 
religious aims. A later and worse stage is one of moody self- 
absorption and of extreme loss of mental power. He is silent, 
or if he converses he discovers delusions of a suspicious or 
obscene character, the perverted sexual passion still giving the 
color to his thoughts. He dies at the last a miserable 
wreck."* 

Bucknill & Tuke's work on Insanity is standard wherever the 
English language is spoken. In it they say; — " To estimate 
with anything like accuracy the relation which Sexual Vice bears 
to insanity, requires considerable discrimination. * * Relia- 
ble facts are, of course, most difficult to obtain, and such fig- 
ures reveal little of the real truth — the extensive mental mis- 
chief done — of which there can be no doubt whatever." 
Again, under the heading, " Insanity caused by Masturbation," 
they say; — " Many years ago (1844) Dr. Luther Bell, of the 
McLean Asylum, Massachusetts, and Dr. Ray, pointed out in 
graphic terms this state of mental disorder as ' a form of moral 
insanity.' Sooner or later, however, decided delusions appear. 
The former described it as characterized by strong suspicions of 
threatened personal injury, of calumny experienced, of secret 
enemies, and analogous hallucinations, the patient at the same 
time evincing but little aberration in ordinary outward manner 
and conversation. ' This type of disease,' he says, 'is so pecu- 
liar that it and its presumed cause are most generally correctly 
recognized on the application to the Asylum for admission, and 

* Reynolds' System of Medicine. 



SELF-ABUSE. 481 

"before the patient is seen. The patient is committed with the 
strong anticipation that so slight a degree of Insanity can be 
readily and quickly removed. Tain hope ! Experience shows 
just enough of recoveries in such cases to prevent absolute des- 
pair, and no more. Kay, more, the progress of the mind is 
commonly downward ; more than in any other form of disease 
it is difficult to sustain the sufferer's self-respect, .and to make 
him tolerably comfortable. Ordinary motives fall powerless 
upon him. If the delusions are few, the disposition is sulky, 
mischievous, and dangerous ; if many, they are always irritat- 
ing and distressing. The hallucinations of these sufferers 
almost always run in a peculiar channel ; spirits or evil-disposed 
persons whisper through flues and walls, or at the distance of 
miles, suggesting everything which is outrageous and insulting ; 
gases, and influences more etherial, are scattered around them 
to render their existence wretched ; nauseous matters are placedl 
in their food ; their sleep is wantonly disturbed by gross per- 
sonal outrages, and the like. They are subject to be driven to 
fury, and commit acts of violence, if some particular person is, 
flxed upon as connected with their wrongs. They are also sub- 
ject to impulsive acts of violence where no delusion can be pre- 
sumed to have prompted them, and where, indeed, the patient, 
after the paroxism has passed, is unconscious of any delusion ; 
he has committed the act of violence with no other explanation 
than that it crossed his mind to do it, and that simultaneously 
it was done. Motives act scarcely at all upon these sufferers, 
except fear ; higher appeals are powerless. ' 

"Dr. Bell concludes this melancholy picture by expressing 
the opinion that (although the intellect is sometimes wonderfully 
little effected) the happiest thing that can happen for this class 
is to sink into dementia. ; Their own sufferings and those of 
their friends rarely have any earlier quiet.' 

" Schroeder van der Kolk has also well described this form of 

(31) 



482 SELF- ABUSE. 

mental disorder. c If, ' he says, ' one perceives in a young man 
a certain shyness, and an evasive and cast-down look, a dull 
irresolute character, which are soon accompanied by stupidity 
and confusion of head, and weakness of memory, then one 
must be mindful of this sad vice. In addition to this, 
there is an inconstancy of character and inconsistency of 
demeanor, according as the unhappy tendency is indulged with- 
out restraint, or as in some degree a check is put to it. The 
fear of man often arises ; they think that every one on the way 
looks at them, complain of it, allow themselves to be misled by 
all kinds of suspicion and perverted imaginations. If there 
occur, moreover, fanatical notions and self-accusations, then we 
can have scarcely a doubt as to the cause. We find also, in 
general, an irregular circulation, the hands cool, yet bedewed 
with sweat, the head hot, especially the neck and back of the 
head and vertex. Biting of the nails, scratching of the fin- 
gers, from which numerous hang nails arise, may occur in other 
forms of melancholy, but most frequently in this. The bowels 
are also sluggish. * * The dull look is, for the most 
part, quite characteristic. The diminution of the intellectual 
power passes at last into Dementia. 5 

" Lastly, Dr. Skae, describes this vesania in words which all 
familiar with it will admit to be eminently truthful. ' I think, ' 
he says, ' that this vice produces a group of symptoms which 
are quite characteristic and easily recognized, and give to the 
cases a special natural history ; the peculiar imbecility and shy 
habits of the very youthful victim ; the suspicion, and fear, and 
dread, and suicidal impulses, and palpitations, and scared look, 
and feeble body of the older offenders, passing gradually into 
Dementia or Fatuity.' " Referring to the matter in another 
place they speak of " the fatal indulgence of his wretched pleas- 
ures.". This is what Bucknill and Tuke say, and call in others 
to say for them. 

There is no more standard authority on the functions and dis- 



SELF-ABUSE. 4?3 

orders of the reproductive organs than Dr. William Acton. He 
says; — "That insanity is a consequence of this habit, is now 
beyond a doubt. The connection between insanity and extrava- 
gant sexual desire is alarmingly close, as appears from many 
modern investigations, especially with regard to the central por- 
tion of the cerebellum. Deslandes has remarked that, ' in pro- 
portion as the intellect becomes enfeebled the generative sensi- 
bility is augmented.' The subject has recently been thoroughly 
investigated by Dr. Ritchie, from whose able treatise, entitled, 
1 An inquiry into a frequent cause of insanity in young men,' I 
have condensed the following particulars ; — * * ' The 
parent, after her son (the only child it may be) is taken to an 
asylum, will tell you that his insanity cannot be accounted for. 
He has been so well-conducted, so quiet and studious, not seek- 
ing the company of the gay, the idle, and the thoughtless, but 
remaining quietly at home rather than joining the social amuse- 
ments of those of his own age. Further inquiry may elicit that 
he has been of good abilities, and it may be clever in his occu- 
pation; that he had few friends, and rather shunned the society 
of those of the other sex. Had he been other than he was, 
some cause might have been found in the irregularities of life 
to cause insanity in one scarcely beyond boyhood's years ; but 
in such a quiet lad, and so carefully brought up, she is unable 
to suppose a cause. Then she may tell you that for some time 
past a gradual alteration has been going on ; he has changed 
not only in manner but in appearance ; he has become so pee- 
vish and irritable, so reserved in his conversation, so apathetic 
in manner, so slovenly in dress, so contradictory and so uncer- 
tain in his actions, so hesitating, first determining on one thing, 
and before he could execute that, changing to some other course. 
and has shown such a want of self-reliance. That quite recently 
he has grown more and more apathetic, more slovenly in dress, 
paying less attention to cleanliness, and becoming slower in his 
actions ; that he is now not only irritable in his temper, but is 



4 84 SELF- ABUSE. 

at times violent; that he does things by 'fits and starts,' is 
impulsive, deliberating long, and then suddenly hastens appar 
ently to carry out his intention ; and has become so stupid-look- 
ing and lost, and incapable of taking care either of himself or 
his business; and all this has occurred without any apparent 
cause, except it may be his 'studious habits.' At last he can 
be borne with no longer ; he is unmanageable in a private house, 
and is obliged to be removed from his home. 

u 4 On entering an asylum for the insane, especially if it be 
on-s receiving patients from the middle as well as from the lower 
c<ass of society, there is one group of inmates which may arrest 
the attention of the visitor from the contrast presented to the 
excited persons around him, on the one hand, and to those who 
are convalescent on the other. Engaged in no social diversion, 
the patients of this group live alone in the midst of many. In 
their exercise they choose the quietest and most unfrequented 
parts of the airing grounds. They join in no social conversa- 
tion, nor enter with others into any amusement. They walk 
alone, or they sit alone. If engaged in reading they talk not 
to others of what they may have read ; their desire apparently 
is, in the midst of numbers, to be in solitude. They seek no 
social joys, nor is the wish for fellowship evinced. 

U4 The pale complexion, the emaciated form, the slouching 
gait, the clammy palm, the glassy or leaden eye, and the 
averted gaze, indicate the lunatic victim to this vice. 

u c Apathy, loss of memory, abeyance of c mcentrative power 
and manifestation of mind generally, combined with loss of 
self-reliance, and indisposition for a repulsiveness of action, 
irritability of temper, and incoherence of language, are the 
most characteristic mental phenomena of chronic dementia 
resulting from masturbation in young men. 

" w As in diseases of an exhaustive nature we find that the 
cutaneous secretion is poured forth abundantly, so in the cases 
occupying our attention, the perspiration breaks forth on the 



SELF-ABUSE. 485 

slightest exertion. This relaxed condition of the perspiratory 
system is especially marked in the palms, and the exception is 
to find these dry in the masturbator; for generally a damp, or 
cold, clammy perspiration is constantly present, and makes it 
particularly disagreeable to take the hand of one of these per- 
sons. The sub-tegumentary layer is but sparingly supplied 
with fat, which is remarkable, considering the little exercise 
these patients, if left to their own guidance, would take. 

" ' To conclude this description, it is only necessary to add 
that the gait is slovenly or slouching, that the gaze is downcast 
or averted, and when addressed, the masturbator does not look 
the speaker openly in the face whilst he replies, but looks to 
the ground or beyond the questioner. 

" ' Remonstrate with these victims after they are received 
into an asylum, whilst reason is still not quite destroyed, and 
they will agree with your remarks. They will express their 
thankfulness that they have yet been spared some portions of 
reason ; they will express their deep abhorrence of their con- 
duct ; they will shed the tears of apparent penitence ; and yet 
the old habit will be relapsed into ; and when they think that 
they are removed beyond control, will once again indulge in 
their self-destroying practice. The determination to conduct 
themselves in the pure course is wanting, and in this there is 
evidence of the pernicious energy-sapping cause. 

" 'Few accidents are more capable of occasioning annoyance 
and disappointment to the physician, and none more calculated 
to excite his pity and regret, than to find the recovery he 
regarded as certain, marred and prevented, or delayed, by the 
preventable act of the patient himself. This cause of relapse is 
but little believed in, except by those who are intimately 
acquainted with the habits of the insane ; but regarding it as 
possible, many an unexpected and unaccountable relapse can 
be readily explained. When any tendency to indulgence has 
foeen observed in the early stages of mania, the prognosis ought 



486 SELF- ABUSE. 

to be stated in well-weighed words. The fact of a patient, 
neither epileptic nor the subject of paralysis (although in young 
men the former is more probable), who when put to bed was 
progressing favorably, being in a lost or much confused state 
when he got up on the succeeding morning, would be significant 
of some cause acting during the night. In the absence of 
excitement or a fit, the probability of this cause ought not to be 
forgotten. 

u ' In the acute or recent dementia, the condition of the 
patient is most pitiable. His existence is, for a tim«, merely 
vegetative, and in well-marked cases the obstinacy of disposi- 
tion is almost the only indication of a mental action, and the 
mental origin of this may even be doubted. The sufferer 
becomes quiet silent, and is lost and unable to take care of him- 
self. He becomes statuesque, and extremely obstinate. He 
resists passively, and occasionally actively. If he be in bed, 
he will not rise to be washed or dressed. If up, he will not 
retire at proper time to bed, or allow himself to be undressed. 
Everything requires to be done for him. Cleanliness is neg- 
lected, and his dress unattended to. He makes no effort to 
speak, and when addressed, although conscious, does not appear 
to comprehend what is said. He will not feed himself. 

" ' How earnestly do those who know what the future will 
bring to such a one repeat these feeling words of Ellis — ' Would 
that I could take its melancholy victims with me in 'my daily 
rounds (at Hanwell Asylum), and could point out to them the 
awful consequences which they do but little suspect to be the- 
result of its indulgence. I could show them those gifted by 
nature with high talents, and fitted to be an ornament and a 
benefit to society, sunk into such a state of physical and moral 
degradation as wrings the heart to witness, and still persever- 
ing, with the last remnant of a mind gradually sinking into 
fatuity, and with the consciousness that their hopeless wretched- 
ness is the just reward of their own misconduct.' " 



SELF-ABUSE. 487 

Dr. X. Bourgeois, of Paris, pictures the same conditions in 
the following vigorous language; — "How many times in visit- 
ing the asylums of the insane, — Charenton, Bicetre, La Salpe. 
triere, Saint-Lazare, — how many times have I meditated upon 
the deplorable consequences of debauchery, upon the terrible 
but just chastisements inflicted in consequence of outraged 
hygiene and morality ! O golden youth ! said I to myself, at 
this hour so brilliant of health, so thoughtless, — you who are 
intoxicated with pleasures, who taste one by one the thousand 
enjoyments of the senses, who lavish your gold and the luxuri- 
ant forces of your life, may you never, like me, be present at 
these touching spectacles of intellectual decay and of moral 
degradation ! Oh that you may not hear the lamentable histo 
ries of these brutish beings, who erewhile, like you, hastened 
from festival to festival, like you sacrificing themselves to idols 
of flesh and bone! * * * Now behold them, these sad vic- 
tims, such as debauchery has made them ! * * * Behold 
them with wasted body, stupid countenance, an eye without fire, 
a face without thought! They are there, filthy, ragged, 
infected, their hair disordered, with drivelling mouth, flabby 
arms, and trembling limbs. One passes his days crouched in a 
corner, immovable and mute, soiled by his excremental ordures 
which he evacuates unconsciously. The other, beset by the 
salacity of a satyr, has the insatiable madness to seek in his 
withered organs the enjoyments which they can no longer 
give. * * * 

"If we did not see these hideous spectacles, we could not 
believe that human nature could ever descend to such a degra- 
dation of body and soul." Surely the French statesman, 
Count Joseph de Maistre was right when he said, "The pas- 
sions can augment the number and intensity of diseases to a 
point which it is impossible to assign ; and, reciprocally, the 
hideous empire of physical ill can be contracted by virtue within 
limits that cannot be fixed." 



488 SELF ABUSE . 

Nor is it only the trained eye of the physician which can see 
the danger and distruction, the idiocy and insanity, which 
result from this insidious vice. The following letter from an 
educator of large influence, and in high position, speaks for 
itself. 

My Dear Friend :— In keeping my promise to give you some of the results 
of my observations touching the terrible habit of self-abuse, I will, by your 
leave, address myself directly to the readers of the book which you are so 
kindly and wisely preparing for their instruction. 

My Dear Boys : — Do you know how much it will be worth to you if you 
can keep your lives clean and sweet all your days ? Do you know what a 
dreadful thing it is for a boy or man to become so accustomed to impurity 
that he forgets how to blush at that which should fill any good man's heart 
with shame? An obscene story, however ridiculous, is like an infected garment; 
it cannot be circulated without leaving everywhere its dreadful influence. A good 
man once told me that he had never been able to forget the one or two filthy 
stories to which, in his boyhool, he had been foolish enough to listen. After 
fifty years of earnest, active, Christian life, the disgusting scenes depicted in 
these stories would be suggested by some association of ideas, would force 
themselves upon him, and would no more "down," at his command than 
Banquo's ghost at the bidding of the conscience stricken Macbeth. 

And yet, my dear lads, how many of you are thoughtlessly smirching your 
young souls with jests, stories and imaginings, impure in their nature and too 
often so foul that, if while you were indulging therein, your eye should meet 
your mother's, it would fall to the ground in miserable and shameful confu- 
sion! What fascination is there in impurity, that it has such a hold upon our 
young folks ? Nature cries out against it and warns you in every way. that 
you are bringing shame upon yourselves. 

My dear young friends, do you not know how surely the habit of obscene 
thought and speech develops into the impure act, and habits of thought lead 
to habits of life, in the indulgence of which there is but one tendency, viz., a 
lowering, a degrading of the whole being, moral and physical? 

The one especial habit to which I refer, you boys know well; it is too sadly 
prevalent, for you to be ignorant of it, and yet, with all its prevalence, so little 
understood that its fearful results are either unknown, or their recital laughed 
at as incredible. 

In many years of intimate dealings with boys and young men I have had 
abundant opportunity of learning much of the prevalence of this habit, of its 
strength, and of the awful results of its long continuance. 

Of all boys whom I have known to indulge in this sin, I do not remember 



SELF-ABUSE. 489 

-one who has not paid a fearful penalty. Nature is likn a wise school-master. 
She does not lay the same punishment upon all, but treats each according to 
his constitution and disposition. The timid and irresolute lad she binds to 
iis habit with chains of iron and then afflicts him with a growing apprecia- 
tion of its horrible tendencies and a conviction of his inability to conquer it. 
The self-willed and self-confident lad she hurries on in his chosen path, and 
when he at last recognizes his danger, allows him, in accordance with his 
natural disposition, to take such a means of cure as brings a worse 
form of trouble, not to say sin, in its track. The sharp, calcu- 
lating boy, who, like the moderate drinker, thinks he can keep his 
Indulgence under good control, so that it will not do much harm, 
receives, perhaps, the most merciless chastisement of all, for he is allowed to 
go on, thinking he can stop any time he wants, until he is in such a condition 
that nothing short of a miracle can save him, and even then he is inclined to 
temporize instead of making a determined and uncompromising renunciation 
•of his sins, mental and physical. 

In my observation of, and talks with boys, I have found a somewhat varied 
line of causes for the continuance of the habit, all satisfactory enough to the 
boys, but simply foolish to those whose wider and longer observation has 
opened their eyes to the stern, relentless facts of the case; and I wish to tell 
you, kindly but plainly, just what you may expect as the penalty for this 
abuse of nature. 

First of all, quietly and stealthily the habit will gain strength until you are 
more thoroughly its slave than a drunkard is a slave to his drink. This may 
seem impossible, but I believe it to be true for this reason. The drunkard 
-has a fierce struggle with a thirst which takes hold of his very life, but he 
needs only to avoid liquor, refuse to take and drink it, and he is saved. He 
may be removed to a place where it is impossible to obtain the poison, and 
kept there if need be during life. 

The victim of the habit I am describing has to contend with as fierce a pas- 
sion, and cannot escape from it ; he may shut himself up in seclusiou and 
only double the temptation and the opportunity of yielding to it. Nay more, 
though he may resist never so bravely, during his waking hours, he finds to 
his horror that the habit invades his sleeping hours and secures its victim 
then, and if 1 may credit the testimony of some boys, no expedient they 
could devise, enabled them to avoid this semi-unconscious abuse. 

Even if all boys do not reach this discouraging condition, they are sure to 
come to a stage of sensitiveness and excitability in the sexual organs which 
is simply disease, and that too of a nature not easy to remove, often assuming 
the form of partial or total impotence, the more obstinate because its cause is 
so difficult to control. Of course physicians know of remedies for it, but 
these remedies are simply worthless, if the victim continues to indulge, his 



490 SELF-ABUSE. 

imagination, by dwelling upon things pertaining to the relations of the 
sexes, and the avoidance of these imaginings, the boys usually acknowledge 
to be almost impossible. 

Moreover the mind works uncontrolled during the slumber, and vile, excit- 
ing dreams cause the loss of seminal fluid. The frequency of these discharges 
is largely dependent upon the tendency of the mind to dwell on impure things 
and the control of this tendency soon becomes impossible. 

The result of frequent seminal loss is a rapid decrease of vigor, both phys- 
ical and mental, and a loss of that will-power on which depends the last hope 
of recovery. 

The phases of this terrible affliction thus far described are very common, 
and I believe, the almost invariable results of any extended indulgence in 
self-abuse. If you are reckless enough to run the risk, trusting to your con- 
trol of the habit, you are sure to suffer thus far, and there is much danger of 
still greater trouble. Let me explain. 

I have shown you that this habit, coupled, as it invariably is, with an imagi- 
nation growing continually more vicious and uncontrollable, brings you to 
involuntary self-pollution, or vile dreams and consequent loss of semen during 
slumber. If the disease is not speedily checked at this phase, there comes a 
breaking down of the system, more or less rapid according to the natural 
strength of your constitution, your habits of life otherwise, and the persist- 
ence of the effort to resist the evil. 

I say there is rapid loss of strength, both physical and mental, and a loss 
of will-force which is indeed alarming in view of the necessity of its persis- 
tent exercise as the only means of safety. 

From this time, judging from the cases with which I have met, the disease 
may assume any one of several phases. I will speak of three. It may take 
the form of physical weakening and run into a sort of wasting away of the 
vital forces, clearly evidenced in the sunken cheeks, the dull eye, cold hands 
and great exhaustion under slight exertion ; in fact a sort of consumption fol- 
lows which usually ends in death and always makes its victim peculiarly pow- 
erless to resist the inroads of other common diseases. 

It may take the form of mental weakness while the body seems vigorous 
or at least ordinarily healthy. This mental weakness frequently becomes 
insanity, and an asylum is the only remedy ; moreover the physicians at 
insane retreats will tell you that this class of victims to insanity is not only 
very large, but almost hopeless of recovery. 

It may take the form of a more moderate physical weakness combined with 
a mental anxiety concerning ones condition, which amounts to hypochondria, 
increases to the point of despair and frequently ends in suicide. 

Let this suffice. Is not the description of the consequences of this com-? 



SELF- ABUSE. 491 

mon habit sufficiently terrible to convince you of the madness of persistence 
therein ? 
But I think I hear some of you with the wisdom of Young America — 

" Who thinks he all things knows, 
When, in truth, he nothing knows," 

arguing that these things cannot be, for you know of plenty of boys who 
have this habit and are just as well and strong as any one ; aye, perhaps, in 
your own secret souls, you say that you are yourselves guilty, but can see no 
signs of the terrible things which I have described. 

Very true, but you must remember that, though nature keeps very long 
accounts, she always exacts pay. The habit may run on for years and seem 
harmless, while it is all the time quietly, insidiously securing a foot-hold in 
your very being, and suddenly you'awake to find yourself its slave. Tis like 
some sweet narcotic, pleasant to the taste but sure in its proper time to over- 
come all resistance and hold its victim powerless in its embrace. 

Let no one deceive himself with such comforting assurance, but listen to a 
few facts. 

I knew a tall, graceful, handsome young fellow ; the pet of society, the 
leader of his class in school, who carried on this habit unsuspected till his 
twenty-third year, and then, to the astonishment of every one, was suddenly 
placed in a private insane retreat, where he remains a hopeless case. The 
trouble was generally supposed to be over-study ; I know better. 

There was a lad of fifteen, large, strong, a good scholar and apparently in 
vigorous health ; I know, for his broken-hearted father told me, that he was 
obliged to sleep in the same room with his parents that aid might be at hand 
when, as was frequently the case, he went into spasms, the result of this 
wretched habit. 

There was another lad, a bright boy of fifteen, the nephew of a physician 
of high standing. Finding this habit getting the better of him, he went to his 
friends for help. All was done that could be done, but his mind and will 
weakened, he yielded to despair and, before his twentieth birthday, shot him- 
self, dead, and a young life that might have been brighter and happier each 
year, went out in darkness, leaving no ray of hope to sorrowing friends. * 

These are only a few of many cases where, though late, Nature has exacted 
her fearful penalty, and as my mind goes back over the sad experiences which 
have come within my knowledge, my heart is saddened as by the passing of a 
funeral procession. Oh the young lives ruined, the bright prospects blighted, 
aye and the hopes of Heaven itself destroyed. 

God grant my young readers, that you may take warning from others who 
have paid so dearly for a miserable and unsatisfactory, an unnatural and 
degrading indulgence. As I said at the outstart, I believe the habit is, from 
its very nature, more enslaving than liquor-drinking or opium-eating, for it 



'492 SELF- ABUSE. 

chains both mind and body, and controls both, waking and sleeping hours. 
-For this truly infernal course, Dante's motto is emphatically appropriate, 
"Who enters here leaves hope behind." 

Hoping that these plain words may be the means of saving some of you 
Urom untold misery, I remain 

Your sincere friend, 



Another most worthy and conscientious teacher writes me; — 
<i It may not be necessary for me to give the results of my 
observation as to the physical effects of this evil upon the 
children and youth. Your own observation and knowledge as 
a physician is doubtless sufficient. There can be no doubt that 
if parents better understood the secret lives of their children, 
they would find, in many cases, that this vice was the primary 
cause of the tits, nervous diseases, brain troubles, etc., so com- 
mon among children. 

"A mother came to me very solicitous in regard to her boy 
(six years old), a pale sickly looking child. She informed me 
that the doctors said he had over-growth of the brain. She 
requested me to be very careful of him, and if I noticed his 
face flushed and he appeared nervous, to send him home ; also 
cautioned me to be sure and not push him too fast in his lessons. 
Carefully watching the development of his mind, no marked 
evidences of unusual intellect were discovered ; on the contrary, 
I regarded him as below the average boy. In conversation with 
the child it was ascertained that he was in the habit of prac- 
ticing this vice. To the question, 'Does your mother know of 
-of this?' he replied, 'No, she don't know that I do it now. 
She knew I did it once, for I was awful sick. I swelled all up 
and had to have the doctor, and they told me I must never do it 
again. But I do it most every day.' To the question, 'When 
and where do you do this? ' he replied, ' Out in the privy when 
I am all alone.' 

u Another instance came under my observation, though not 
•as a teacher. A little boy seven years old lay sick with brain 



SELF- ABUSE. 49 3' 

fever, and in spasms. As a neighbor and friend, I assisted in 
changing his clothing. He was, to all appearance, unconscious ; 
but his hands were so constantly employed exciting himself, thafc 
it was nearly impossible for two of us to change his clothing. 
A council of physicians had already been called . The most 
prominent physician — about fifty years of age — was informed of 
the child's appearance while we were changing his wraps, and 
was asked if it were possible that the child's sickness was caused 
by masturbation. He seemed incredulous at the idea that a 
child so young would practice this evil to such an alarming 
extent. 

"Facts were related to him concerning the habits of small 
children when at school — of children even younger than this 
boy. He remarked it was a new idea to him that it was prev- 
alent among small children. He requested that inquiries be 
made of the child's playmates to ascertain if the boy was 
addicted to the habit. The inquiry was made in plain language 
to his most intimate playmate, and he replied, 4 0, yes, I've 
seen him do it lots of times. He does it most all the time.* 
Inquiries were also made of his teacher. She confirmed the 
same from her knowledge of him at school. 'It is sufficient 
evidence,' said the physician. The child lived but a few days 
longer. 

" Afterward, the child's father remarked to me, ' I can hardly 
forgive our family physician, because he did notgive me instruc- 
tions about children. 1 was young, and ignorant of that which, 
perhaps, I ought to have known ; and had I known what I now 
know, my little boy might have lived.' 

"Teachers who have investigated this subject find many ways 
by which they can detect this practice from the general appear- 
ance, and also the faces of boys. Give an observing teacher a 
few known cases as types of boys who practice masturbation, 
and many a boy would blush did he know how easily his face, 
told the tale of his secret life to his teacher." 



494: SELF- ABUSE. 

And jet, the pity of it all lies beyond all this insanity, and 
spasm, and death. These witnesses have been called to testify, 
that you might have no remaining doubt of the stern physical 
penalties awaiting this transgression. They have shown how 
the extreme of mental and physical disaster awaits the persist- 
ent abuse of this procreative power. With these dire conse- 
quences clearly held up before the mind in all their hideous 
reality, with all the solemn emphasis of their presence, let it be 
repeated that the exceeding pity of it all is more than this. 
Sadder than tenantless house, sadder than reason 
dethroned, sadder than the groping form of manhood with its 
soul-light gone out in darkness, is a sound mind domiciled in a 
sound body, stricken with the cursed paralysis of purposeless- 
ness. This fateful palsy, before which the horrorsof the insane 
asylum dwindle into insignificance, is the one ever-present, 

"er- failing, characteristic result of masturbation. ' ; A morbid 

^ntal state is connected with such a condition, and is apt to be 
the most serious part of the case. The mind is deficient in con- 
centration ; attention wanders, will is weak, timidity and irres- 
olution prevail ; the memory is feeble, and there is a proneness 
toward day-dreaming, especially upon sexual or sensual sub- 
jects. Moreover, the patient is inclined to dwell morbidly and 
with gloomy apprehensions upon his own state." * 

But a small percentage of masturbators are found in the 
insane asylums ; but a small percentage suffer from epilepsy ; 
but a small percentage of them may be found among the list 
of sufferers from any one of the many forms of nervous disorder, 
or disorders of nutrition. But this inevitable loss of all purpose, 
is the portion of them all without exception. In the words of 
Emerson, " The one prudence in life is concentration ; the one 
evil is dissipation." I know of nothing which so surely dissi- 
pates all high ambition, all nobility of purpose, as does this 
practice, from its very inception. Others may rail against it as 

* Dr. Hartshorne, in Reynolds' System of Medicine. 



SELF-ABUSE. 495 

a vile habit, a shameful practice ; I would pass over all that, 
and bring a rigorous indictment against it as the great pur- 
pose-destroyer. 

Sajs Bulwer Lytton, "What men want is not talent, it is 
purpose." All educational effort may be summed up in that 
one word — purpose. It used to be said that education might 
be expressed by the word discipline. But to-day the dangerous 
members of society are men of so much ability, that now we 
hear of the necessity for Christian education. Your education 
has been a success or a failure, just in proportion as it has given 
you, or failed to give you, true nobility of purpose. Dissipat- 
ing the intellectual powers, hamstringing the tendons of the 
will, and assassinating all purpose, masturbation is the foe of 
education, the arch traitor to discipline, u the one evil." 

" The sin of all most sure to blight — 
The sin of all that the soul's light 
Is soonest lost, extinguished in." 

Kemember that it is not of the function, but its abuse, that 
we speak . There is nothing so grand as power, so disastrous 
as its abuse. We have already seen the dignity of the function ; 
but "O Lucifer, Son of the Morning, how art thou fallen! " 
It may be the boy at school. Bright, alert, proud of his stand- 
ing in the class, on the qui vive during recitation, filled with 
chagin over every little failure on his part, his teacher is puz- 
zled by the suddenness of the change which has come over him. 
He shuffles along into the recitation room as if ashamed of him- 
self, yet apparently dead to all sense of shame. For now he 
does not pretend to have his lesson, and instead of the accus- 
tomed blush over every little slip, he lets the whole recitation 
go by with nothing but a sullen look, and a muttered "don't 
care." Purpose and ambition have been foully murdered in the 
tower, like the two princes of history. The one aim of exist- 
ence, for him, is the procuring of opportunities for his clandes- 
tine orgies. 



496 SELF- ABUSE. 

Sometimes such an one will assume a fictitious air of over- 
sprightliness, and activity ; and his parents blindly worry about 
his " nervousness." But his teacher finds that the spirit of 
endeavor has left him just as completely, and, to the observant* 
his exaggerated activity is painful from its patent insincerity. 
It may be the young man, at college, or studying for his profes- 
sion, or beginning business life at the foot of the ladder. For 
some unaccountable reason his tutors can do nothing with him, 
can make nothing of him ; or his employer says that he hasn't 
the right stuff in him. Purpose and ambition have been foully 
murdered in the tower. Memory, that "warder of the brain," 
goes next. It is the best thing you have left, but this spoiler is 
a ruthless vandal. It enters this citadel of the mind, and saps 
its foundations, until its turreted walls topple into ruined 
heaps. 

Still the destroyer is not satisfied. The innermost sanctuary 
of the intellect is assailed. Its pearly gates are rudely beaten 
down. We catch a wondrous glimpse for just one moment — 
the tessellated floor of polished marble — the lustrous granite 
columns, each one the monument of a conquered obstacle, hewn 
by hope and burnished by sorrow — the groined arches above, 
fretted with all the jewels of faith, of love, of joy, of peace, of 
heaven-born inspiration — its every niche filled with mellow 
light overflown from the celestial walls — the central shrine of 
sheeny gold where burns the sacred fire of imagination — the 
broad white wing above it hovering, for here the mortal con- 
verse holds with his own immortality, and the pinion waiteth 
for the spirit. One moment — and the ruffian tread of the de- 
stroyer echoes through its vaulted arches, and all goes out in ruin 
and in darkness. 

Ob ! the pity of it all. Marshall out the haggard and dishev- 
elled throng from the insane asylum, bring up the rank and 
file of leprous vice, let the epileptics go through their frightful 
drill, yet will I summon a more regretful host than this allied 



SELF-ABUSE. 497 

army. They come on every hand, in surging multitudes ; from 
cultured homes, and sunny firesides ; from schools of learning ; 
from store, and office, and shop. Fair in form and feature* 
their youthful promise the hope of the Eepublic, no plague-spot 
to be seen on any one of them. Yet they are but spectres of 
men. Within them memory is decrepit ; high ambition is mur- 
dered ; purpose lies dead in the house ; imagination is become 
a debauchee. Preserved in outward form, they have already 
suffered within themselves life's utmost possibility of disaster. 
Memory gone, ambition gone, purpose gone, imagination worse 
than gone — what have they left to lose ? The greater includes 
the less ; in losing these they have lost all. 

And such internal wounding as this is every masturbator's 
penalty. The real gravity of consequence is found just here, and 
not in the insane asylum. In placing imagination alongside of 
memory and of purpose, a high rank has, by design, been 
accorded to it. It is hard to be patient with those who under- 
estimate its place among the intellectual faculties ; who talk per- 
petually of "keeping it pure," as if its only active tendency 
were toward putrefaction, its best estate a complete quiescence. 
Who shall say that it is not the highest of the mental powers ? 
Imagination paints the picture, and chisels out the statue. 
Imagination created the cotton gin, the railway, the telegraph, 
the ocean steamer. It is the light cavalry upon which science 
depends for its every reconnoitre. It is the difference between 
mediocrity and genius. Mediocrity says that our soldiers left 
their homes to enter the army. Genius sees them, "talking 
with wives, and endeavoring with brave words, spoken in the 
old tones, to drive from their hearts the awful fear. It sees 
them part. It sees the wife standing in the door with the babe 
in her arms — standing in the sunlight sobbing — at the turn of 
the road a hand waves — she answers by holding high in her loving 
arms the child. He is gone, and forever." 

(32> 



498 SELF- ABUSE. 

Imagination is sight. Debauched by this vice, it is as mighty 
for evil as it was, before, powerful for good. In virtue, in an 
earnest life, it can see nothing to be desired. To its distorted 
gaze, purity itself seems leering with lecherous look. What 
shall we say of such a distemper as this? There rises before 
me the form of Gen. Robert E . Lee. It is after the battle of 
Gettysburg. He stands upon the ground, leaning against his 
charger, his head resting upon his hand. The defeat, the waste 
of human life, the dread aggregate of human suffering, rushes 
upon him like a flood. " Oh ! it is too bad, too bad ! " his 
only words. * " In my opinion, ' ' says Reveille-Parise, ' ' neither 
pestilence, nor war, nor variola, nor a host of similar ills, has 
results more disastrous for humanity. It is the destructive ele- 
ment of civilized societies ; and it is much the more active, inas- 
much as it acts constantly, and ruins populations little by 
little." 

Having seen something of the prevalence and destructiveness 
of this solitary vice, there remains the question as to how we shall 
escape the formation of this habit ; and how far we may suc- 
ceed in restoring those already within its grasp. It is most 
pleasant to turn to the consideration of these topics, for the wise 
parent may save his son untold mental disquietude and loss, 
and much bodily infirmity ; and the wise physician may set the 
young man's feet upon a rock, although he may have been 
standing in slippery places. One night, in the British House 
of Commons, when, at the hands of Disraeli, the Liberal party 
was about to suffer defeat, Gladstone exclaimed, "The Past is 
yours; the Present too, for that matter. The Future is ours." 
With these same words may any young man address his disas- 
trous habit, just so soon as he is determined to have nothing 
more to do with it. 

The parent's work is preventive; the doctor's curative. An 



*As told me immediately after the war, by an officer of the army of the 
Potomac. 



SELF-ABUSE. 499 

ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure — it being 
always best to avert disaster rather than repair damage, it fol- 
lows that the parent's work in this department is of the first 
importance. A boy is never so young as not to need the fath- 
er's kindly and watchful oversight in this matter. He should 
be on the alert for any manifestation of a premature develop- 
ment of the reproductive instinct and organism. "In many 
instances, either from hereditary predisposition, bad companion- 
ship, or other evil influences, sexual feelings become excited at 
a very early age, and this is always attended with injurious, 
often with the most deplorable consequences. Slight signs are 
sufficient to indicate when a boy has this unfortunate tendency. 
He shows marked preferences. You will see him single out 
one girl, and evidently derive an unusual pleasure (for a boy) 
in her society. His penchant does not take the ordinary form 
of a' boy's good nature, but little attentions that are generally 
reserved for a later period prove that his feeling is different, 
and sadly premature. He may be apparently healthy, and fond 
of playing with other boys ; still there are slight but ominous 
indications of propensities frought with danger to himself. His 
play with the girl is different from his play with his brothers. 
His kindness to her is a little too ardent. He follows her, he 
does not know why. He fondles her with tenderness painfully 
suggestive of a vague dawning of passion. No one can find 
fault with him. He does nothing wrong. Parents and friends 
are delighted at his gentleness and politeness, and not a little 
amused at the early flirtation. If they were wise they would 
rather feel profound anxiety ; and he would be an unfaithful 
or unwise medical friend who did not, if an opportunity 
occurred, warn them that such a boy, unsuspicious and innocent 
as he is, ought to be carefully watched, and removed from every 
influence calculated to foster his abnormal propensities. 

"The premature development of the sexual inclination is not 
alone repugnant to all we associate with the term childhood, 



500 SELF-ABUSE. 

but is also frcught with danger to dawning manhood. On the 
judicious treatment of a case such as has been sketched, it prob- 
ably depends whether the dangerous propensity shall be so kept 
in check as to preserve the boy's health and innocence, or 
whether one more shattered constitution and wounded con- 
science shall be added to the victims of sexual precocity and 
careless training. It ought not to be forgotten that in such 
cases a quasi-sexual power often accompanies these premature- 
sexual inclinations."* The precise measures by which such 
tendencies are to be stayed and neutralized, must be left to the 
discretion of the parent, who will suit them to the wants of the 
individual case. In all cases, however, it will be in order to 
see to it that all needless manipulation is dispensed with ; that 
the local cleanliness enjoined in a preceding chapter be faith- 
fully attended to ; that the physical culture be made paramount 
to the mental ; that that confident sympathy which should 
obtain between parent and child, be promoted by all means pos- 
sible. 

All this should be done, yet these things are but prefatory to 
the one great safeguard, the one great preventive — direct 
instruction. At just what age a son should receive fatherly 
instruction concerning those things which he ought to know, 
and has an indisputable right to know, I shall not attempt 
to here determine. No age could be fixed which would 
be best for all boys. Surrounding circumstances and the 
rate of development make it necessary to determine this 
question anew for each individual boy. It will be enough 
to remind parents that these sons of ours learn all about these 
things, from most objectionable sources, at a much tenderer 
age than most imagine ; and that while there is no computing 
the number of those who daily testify to our doctors of the 
damage they have suffered through the failure of parents to 

*Acton. 



SELF- ABUSE. 501 

warn them of possible dangefs, the first one to suffer any harm 
from premature parental instruction is jet to be found. 

Instruction does prevent. There is no doubt about it. There 
is no good reason for withholding it. " Remember that the 
aim of your discipline should be to produce a self- governing 
being, not to produce a being to be governed by others. As 
jour children are by-and-by to be free men, with no one to con- 
trol their daily conduct, you cannot too much accustom them to 
self-control while they are still under your eye. Aim, therefore, 
to diminish the amount of parental government as fast as you 
can substitute for it in your child's mind that self-government 
arising from a foresight of results. All periods of transition are 
dangerous; and the most dangerous is the transition from the 
restraint of the family circle to the non-restraint of the world. 
Hence the importance of pursuing the policy we advocate ; 
which, alike by cultivating a child's faculty of self-restraint, by 
continually increasing the degree in which it is left to its self 
constraint, and by so bringing it, step by step, to a state o 
unaided self-restraint, obliterates the ordinary sudden and haz- 
ardous change from externally-governed youth to internally- 
governed maturity."* 

A teacher, writing me about a class of boys for whom it is 
worth while to work, says; — "There is a class of boys that it 
seems almost impossible to reach by human influence ; possibly 
pre-natal education has much to do with this. However that 
may be, they have little aspiration for anything that is pure or 
good. Their influence is contaminating and corrupting. There 
is another class of boys, who, if better understood by teachers, 
might be reached and helped to lead nobler and purer lives. 
iNot all of the so-called ' bad boys ' at school, are really bad at 
heart. Some of them have aspirations for a better life, but 
liave become victims to this vice when very young, aud are 
wholly ignorant of its effects. The power of habit is strong, 

♦Education. Herbert Spencer. 



502 SELF-ABUSE. 

and the proper instruction, if any, may not have been given by 
parents. ' No one has cared for their souls.' The powers of 
self-respect, self-reliance, and self-control, have become weak- 
ened. It is no wonder they are discouraged. They are suf- 
ferers, and do not comprehend the cause of their suffering. At 
home they are contrary — cross and selfish. At school they are- 
restless, reckless, and disobedient. 

"A teacher, understanding these symptoms, and giving 
proper counsel, might help lift many a boy to a higher life. 
Many instances might be given ; but one boy especially comes 
to mind. He was about fifteen years of age, from an intelli- 
gent family and a Christian home. He was trying to be a 
Christian ; yet at times he was contrary and wayward at home- 
At school I found him restless, impatient at restraint, and easily 
discouraged with lessons. He was a source of annoyance and 
trouble — every measure failed to have a permanent influence. 

u In conversation with an older sister, I learned that when 
he was a little child two or three years old, he was left in her 
charge one day, while the mother was away. She was young, 
innocent, and ignorant; and while adjusting his clothing she 
accidentally touched him in a manner that tickled, causing the 
child to giggle and laugh. She thought of it only as fun ; and 
exciting him, played for hours with the child, and frequently 
did it afterwards. From this time, while he was a small boy,, 
she knew he was in the habit of exciting himself. It was the 
secret fear of her life that she had ruined her brother. 

" After learning this, the following conversation took place 
one day; — 'My boy, you are not at heart a bad boy.' He 
replied ; — ' You don't know me.' ' Yes, I do, and I know what, 
makes you so restless and reckless at times. I understand you 
thoroughly. I know the secret cause of all this.' He fastened 
his eyes upon me for a moment with a fierce, tiger look ; then 
tears filling his eyes, he said; — 'If you understand me, you are 
the only person in the wide world who does. My father does 



• SELF-ABUSE. 503 

A brief conversation followed and be 
asked ; — ' Are you really a friend to me?' This is not an iso- 
lated case. There are in a teacher's life many instances where 
proper instruction given in a kind manner before a boy's self- 
respect is gone, may save him. With loss of self-respect comes 
despair. 

." Could this class of boys be made fully to understand the 
importance of pure secret life in youth ; could they realize that 
masturbation in youth will affect their whole after life, not only 
physically and mentally, but also morally ; that purity of char- 
acter once lost can never be restored to them, comparatively 
few of the boys now practicing this vice would be long found 
among its victims. Whatever may be said of Henry Ward 
Beecher, he had a high conception of purity of character when 
he expressed these thoughts; — 'Over the plum and apricot 
there may be seen a bloom and beauty more exquisite than the 
fruit itself— a soft delicate flush — that overspreads its blushing 
cheek. Now, if you strike your hand over that, and it is once 
gone, it is gone forever; for it never grows but once. The 
flower that hangs in the morning impearled with dew, arrayed 
with jewels — once shake it so that the beads roll off, and you 
may sprinkle water over it as long as you please s yet it can 
never be made again what it was when the dew fell lightly upon 
it from heaven. 

"'On a frosty morning you may see the panes of glass 
covered with landscapes, mountains, lakes, and trees, blended 
in a beautiful fantastic picture. Now, lay your hand upon the 
glass, and by the scratch of your fingers, or by the warmth of 
the palm, all the delicate tracery will be immediately obliter- 
ated. So in youth, there is a purity of character which, when 
once touched and defiled, can never be restored, — a fringe more 
delicate than frostwork, and which, when torn and broken, will 
never be re-embroidered. A man who has spotted and soiled 
his garments in youth, though he may seek to make them white 



OU4 SELF- ABUSE. 

again, can never wholly do it, even were he to wash them with 
his tears. 

"'Whena young man leaves his father's house with the 
blessing of his mother's tears still wet upon his forehead, if he 
once loses that early purity of character, it is a loss he can 
never make whole again. Such is the consequence of crime. 
Its effects cannot be eradicated, they can only be forgiven.' " 

The young man should distinctly understand that this matter 
of seminal losses is altogether a relative affafr. His under- 
standing of this should be definite and explicit. Professor 
William C. W ilkinson remarked recently, that he was impressed 
anew with the " relativity " of things. Phosphorus is a neces- 
sary element in the processes of the animal economy ; yet phos- 
phorus is a frightful poison. A temperature of ninety-eight and 
three-fifths degrees, is the requirement of health ; add to that 
ten degrees, and we have death almost inevitable. Precisely 
the same relation exists between the occasional unloading of the 
seminal vesicles of the continent celibate, and the exhausting 
orgies of the masturbator. 

" It is important to bear in mind that involuntary seminal 
losses, to constitute a disease, must occur with sufficient fre- 
quency to produce definite symptoms. Many patients who 
come to a physician for advice and treatment for this affection 
are not really suffering from the seminal losses, but from an 
imaginary ailment. Experiencing an occasional seminal loss, 
and ignorant in regard to the physiological condition, they 
imagine themselves the subjects of spermatorrhoea. Brooding 
over their presumed 'weakness,' they fall into a hypochondri- 
acal state, and soon experience the whole train of wretched 
symptoms depicted in popular works on the subject. Every 
subjective sensation, no matter what its origin, is referred to the 
debilitating effects of the spermal losses. * * Cases of this 
kind are very numerous, and difficult to manage. No explana- 
nation or demonstration satisfies them. One apprehension 



SELF-ABUSE. 505 

allayed, they quickly take up another, returning at last to the 
sexual disorder."* 

"Id continent men of full health, an involuntary seminal 
discharge during sleep once in two or three weeks is common; 
and is then so innocent as to be regarded by many as physio- 
logical and normal. More frequent emissions are abnormal, in 
proportion to their frequency; and may cause much loss of 
strength. While haemorrhoids, worms in the bowels, etc., may 
occasionally promote this, the cause of actually excessive sper- 
matorrhoea, in ninety-nine cases (at least) in a hundrec^must be 
believed to be self-abuse. The cure of this habit is, not always 
at once, but almost certainly in the end, the cure of the result- 
ing spermatorrhoea. The disastrous effects so obvious in many 
cases are due first to the vicious habit, and secondarily only, to 
the involuntary discharges." f 

"In as much as the seminal secretion of a healthy man may 
naturally be supposed to be a continuous one, it appears as a 
physiological necessity, that there should occur from time to 
time an overflow of semen involuntarily, when not irritated vol- 
untarily by coition or masturbation. As long as such discharges 
happen at night during sleep, with erotic dreams, accompanied 
by erections and voluptuous sensations, and followed by a sense 
-of relief and buoyancy, these nocturnal pollutions are certainly 
within the boundaries of health. They do not occur regularly 
even in the same individual, but vary greatly in frequency from 
temporary causes, or certain constitutional peculiarities. How- 
ever, if they occur too often, say several times a week or oftener, 
and are followed next day by a general dullness and weakness, 
diminution of mental activity, etc., instead of buoyancy, they 
can scarcely be looked upon as healthy occurrences. This is 
still more so if they occur without erection and sensation in the 
night during sleep. But if they occur even in the daytime — 
f diurnal pollutions ' — while the individual is awake, without the 

* Bartholow. f Hartshorne. 



506 SELF ABUSE . 

usual mechanical causes (coition or masturbation), from any 
trifling external cause ; for instance, from dallying with a female, 
riding on horseback, during evacuation of the bowels or blad- 
der, or from lascivious imaginations, then there surely exists an 
irritation and weakness in the sexual organs which is pathologi- 
cal ; for a healthy man never loses semen involuntarily when 
awake." * 

The only criterion by which we may determine whether a 
given frequency of appearance of the fecundating fluid be nor- 
mal or abnormal, is the effect upon the individual. No mathe- 
matical rules can be laid down. Yet the wisest course to pur- 
sue is not by any means found in a constant and anxious sur_ 
veillance of this function. Of all men most miserable, is he 
who assumes the attitude of special policeman toward all his 
bodily functions. Think of your head, and it will be sure to 
ache ; wonder whether your eyes are equal to your work, and 
presto, they begin to pain ; interrogate your stomach, and at 
once it becomes sulky ; take anxious thought for the alvine 
evacuations, and you are inevitably constipated ; fancy that you 
cannot sleep, and in the morning you are equally forlorn, slum 
ber or no slumber ; decide that your lot is physical weakness, 
nor allopath, nor homoeopath, nor hydropath, nor eclectic, nor 
Thomsonian, nor sanitarium, nor mineral water, can do anything 
for you. For you the only efficient measures are spanking, and 
a nursing bottle. There must be a return to first principles. 
You must begin again at the beginning, and learn how to live. 

To bestow this conscious thought upon these physical pro- 
cesses which nature has decreed shall move forward without the 
intervention of the will, is to violate the first rule of health. 
Unconsciousness of the physical man is the primary condition 
of normal manhood. If you begin to question whether you are 
not suffering from this or that ailment, you will inevitably expe- 
rience its characteristic symptoms, together with a host of oth- 

* Raue. Special Pathology and Therapeutic Hints. 



SELF- ABUSE. 50f 

ers which are not characteristic, but absurd. In this way you 
may hunt yourself through the whole dread catalogue of the ills 
to which human flesh is heir, from A to Z. Who ever heard of 
even a medical student, who could pass through the ordeal of 
the first study of diseases of the heart, without becoming firmly 
impressed that his own heart was seriously deranged. 

Why, we have the disease known as syphilophobia — dread of 
syphilis. The patient dreads lest he be the victim of syphilis, 
when he knows perfectly well that the disease is communicated 
by contact, and that he has not thus rendered himself liable. 
It is precisely the same with the seminal overflow. The dis- 
charges are watched with eagle eye ; the most direful results 
are anticipated ; and through imagination, more or less realized. 
It is really a case of spermatophobia, and we ought to have 
such a term in our nomenclature ; for the victims of this imagin- 
ary disorder are very many. Let all these lay it to heart, as 
well as those who have no fears, but would do the best things for 
their bodies, that direct, solicitous attention to this matter is 
just the way to get into trouble. 

We were not created to be absorbed in the reproductive func- 
tion, any more than in the alimentive function. If we set our- 
selves as watchdogs over it, the tendency will be toward our 
becoming constantly more cur and less man. Adaptation under 
training, is one of the most frightful of natural laws to those 
who make bad use of their powers. The way of right living is 
found in the exercise of common sense toward the body as a 
whole, and the ignoring of particulars. Go to bed early, and 
rise promptly in the morning ; but don't fill your brain with 
meditations on the dangers of insomnia. Eat good, sensible 
food ; but don't be everlastingly questioning whether this or 
that will u agree" with you. Be sure that you are not living 
an aimless existence ; let each day be purposeful ; keep steadily 
at work for some definite end ; and let the reproductive func- 
tion take care of itself. It will care for itself more successfully 



S>08 SELF- ABUSE. 

than you can care for it, if you will only let it. If your best 
^energies, mental and physical, are daily exercised, with strong 
and steady purpose the motive power, eruptive excitements of 
the reproductive apparatus will be sufficiently infrequent to 
quiet all alarm. 

That spermatorrhoea which is real, and not imaginary, has its 
origin, with rare exceptions, in self-abuse. " Seminal inconti- 
nence is usually acquired, and is due in the great majority of 
instances to masturbation . Thus of the seventy-six cases of 
which I have a record, in only one was it the result of an inher- 
ited predisposition. Of the remaining seventy -five, in seventy, 
or ninety-three per cent, it was traceable to onanism ; in three 
it arose from gonorrhoea ; and in two it was met with in men 
who had masturbated, suffered from gonorrhoea, and had 
indulged their propensities in various ways. 

" When the case goes on from bad to worse, it usually pur- 
sues the following course, in consequence of the increase in the 
mobility of the ejaculatory center, and of the advancing exhaus- 
tion of the entire nervous system. At first abnormal frequency 
of the nocturnal pollutions is associated with backache, head- 
ache, a sense of painful muscular fatigue, and slight pare- 
sis of the brain, as indicated by incapacity for any sustained 
mental effort. With the increase in the number of the emis- 
sions, the patient discovers that erections are becoming insuffi- 
cient, and that ejaculation on coition is precipitate; and the 
general symptoms are aggravated by the addition of dulness of 
perception, impairment of memory, vertigo, mental dejection, 
weakness of vision, trembling of the limbs, palpitation of the 
heart, shortness of breath, a sense of oppression in the chest, 
flatulence, constipation, and other dyspeptic signs. Diurnal 
pollutions from slight mechanical or psychical causes are now 
superadded, and the emissions occur, with little or no erection 
or pleasurable sensation, or even when the penis is flaccid ; and 
intercourse is impracticable, either from flabby erection, or from 



SELF-ABUSE. 5G9> 

anticipating ejaculation. The general symptoms also are more 
serious. The patient is liable to brood over his assumed lost 
virility, and the mental depression verges upon or passes into a. 
condition of sexual hypochondrism. His gait is unsteady ; he 
is subject to wandering neuralgic and rheumatoid pains; the 
hands and feet are habitually cold; he passes restless or- 
sleepless nights; shuns society ; fears to look one in the face ; 
is utterly incapacitated for mental or physical exertion ; and 
thinks of nothing but his sexual organs. With the still further 
increase of the irritable weakness of the genitalia and nervous, 
system, the semen constantly oozes out of the urethra, and its 
discharge is augmented during defecation and micturition. The 
man is converted into a confirmed hypochondriac, and if he 
comes from an insane family, he lapses into insanity, not, how- 
ever, because of the seminal losses, but because of the disturb- 
ances of the nervous system which lead to the emissions. A. 
person who has inherited a tendency to insanity, epilepsy, 
ataxia, or other nervous disorders, may, therefore, bring on 
those affections, the first link in the chain being functional 
troubles of the nervous centers, which gradually pass into 
organic disease, and are caused, according to my observations^ 
in rather more than nine-tenths of all cases, by masturbation. 

"Of the general symptoms which are associated with abnor- 
mal seminal losses, and which indicate more or less complete- 
exhaustion of the brain and spinal cord, an analysis of seventy- 
six cases, of which I have notes, indicates the following inter- 
esting facts in regard to their importance and relative frequency. 
There was an anxious or depressed condition of the mind in 
thirty-one ; constant dwelling upon sexual matters in thirty-five ;. 
hypochondrism in six; mental dejection after intercourse in 
twenty-five ; impairment of memory in twenty-three ; incapa- 
city for prolonged mental exertion in twenty-two ; headache in 
nineteen; vertigo in fourteen ; broken sleep in five ; insomnia, 
in two ; drowsiness in Hve ; irascibility in two ; asthenopia, or 



"3 ID SELF- ABUSE . 

muscse volitantes, in fourteen ; noises in the ears in eleven ; 
muscular weakness of the limbs and fatigue in thirty-eight ; 
trembling of the limbs in six; temporary reflex paraplegia in 
one ; pain in the back in thirty-two ; oppressed breathing in 
«even ; pain in the chest in three ; constipation in twenty -five ; 
dyspepsia in seventeen ; palpitation of the heart in ten ; sub- 
jective sensations of cold in seven, and of heat in four ; loss of 
flesh in nine ; and pallor of the face in twelve. 

" It will thus be perceived that constant occupation of the 
mind with the sexual functions, mental dejection, impairment 
of the memory, incapacity for mental work, headache, vertigo, 
muscular weakness of the limbs, pain in the back, noises in the 
ears, and irritability of the eyes constitute the most common of 
the disturbances of the cerebro-spinal axis and of the special 
senses; while, of the phenomena referable to the circulatory, 
respiratory, digestive, vaso-motor, and nutritive systems, palpi- 
tation of the heart, oppression of breathing, constipation, indi- 
gestion, chilliness, a feeling of elevated temperature, pallor, 
.and emaciation are the most frequent."' 55 ' 

The local changes in the reproductive apparatus itself, induced 
by this artificial stimulation, have been a matter of some dis- 
pute. While masturbation is almost universally the primary cause 
of sexual depression, the question has been as to what particular 
state of affairs has resulted in the local mechanism itself, tend- 
ing to perpetuate the abnormal condition, and so acting 
as a secondary or immediate cause. The first name of note 
appearing in this connection was that of Lallemand, in France, 
who asserted the difficulty to be with the prostatic portion of 
the urethra. The prostatic portion of the urethra is that por- 
tion next the bladder, about one and a quarter inches in length, 
embraced by the prostate gland, and containing the openings 
of the ejaculatory ducts, through which the semen is thrown 
into the urethra. Lallemand' s dictum was, that an irritation 

♦Disorders of the Male Sexual Organs. Gross. 



SELF-ABUSE. 511 

and inflammation of this portion of the urethra was set up, suf- 
ficient to act as a constant exciting cause perpetuating, indefi- 
nitely, the disorder. Of late it has been somewhat fashionable 
to challenge this opinion. 

Thus Hartshornef remarks ; — " In pathology, Lallemand was, 
for a long time, allowed to impose upon the medical mind his 
opinion that irritation or inflammation of the prostatic por- 
tion of the urethra is the general or universal immediate cause 
of spermatorrhoea. As Bartholow more correctly states, this 
is quite exceptional." Turning to Bartholow,^; I am much 
disappointed by his contradictory statements. On page 20 he 
says; — "To place this question beyond controversy, I have 
lately made a most careful dissection of the sexual apparatus of 
a young man dead of a double pneumonia, who was known to 
have practiced masturbation in an extreme degree for many 
years. Besides a catarrhal condition of the mucous membrane 
of the seminal and prostatic ducts, and of the vesiculae semi- 
nales, there was literally no lesion of these organs. I therefore 
reject this position of Lallemand as untenable, and as leading 
to improper methods of treatment." While on pages 41-2, he 
says, in detailing the symptoms of the disorder ; — u The urethra 
is red, injected, and exceedingly sensitive, and considerable 
irritation is referred to the region of the neck of the bladder 
and prostate gland. ~No other anatomical lesions can, with pro- 
priety, be attributed to spermatorrhoea." 

The fact of the matter is, Lallemand' s view is the most 
rational, best explains the tendency of the disorder to perpet- 
uate itself, and more than all, is borne out by the facts . No 
surgeon who will explore the urethra in these cases, will be left 
in doubt. The super-sensitiveness is mostmarked. As Gross 
puts it, in his capital work; — "Onanism is the most fruitful 
source of inflammation and hyperesthesia of the prostatic portion 

fEssentials of Practical Medicine. 
^Spermatorrhoea. 



512 SELF-ABUSE. 

of the urethra, a view in which I am sustained by Kosenthaly 
Ulzmann, Black, Acton, and nearly all surgical authors.'' 
Again; — u Under the influence of erotic ideas, masturbation^ 
sexual excesses, or unsatisfied sexual excitement produced by 
toying with females, exaggerated irritability of the genital 
organs is induced, and is soon followed by chronic or subacute 
inflammation and hyperesthesia of the prostatic portion of the 
urethra, which culminate, in bad cases, or in those character- 
ized by diurnal pollutions and spermorrhagia, in dilitation and 
relaxation of the orifices of the ejaculatory ducts. As the natu- 
ral result of their constant excitability, the nerves distributed 
to the prostatic urethra are alive to the slightest impressions. 
This condition induces increased mobility or irritability of the 
reflex cerebral and spinal genital centers, through which the motor 
nerves which supply the ejaculatory apparatus are thrown into 
action, and an emission follows. This, it seems to me, is the 
rational explanation of seminal incontinence." 

Again; — "Of the local causes of spermatorrhoea by far the 
most common are hyperesthesia and chronic inflammation of 
the prostatic portion of the urethra which are generally induced 
by masturbation ; and these morbid conditions are just as 
important in its production as they are in the causation of impo- 
tence. In the vast majority of cases, they constitute the origi- 
nal source of the trouble, and tend not only to excite reflex 
emissions, but also to maintain the disorder by keeping the 
mind occupied with sexual matters. Even in cases in which the 
affection would seem to depend upon other local lesions, they 
are almost invariably present, so that associated disorders * * 
merely act by intensifying them." Once more; — " Of the 
exciting causes of abnormal seminal losses by far the most con- 
stant and important are subacute or chronic inflammation and 
hyperesthesia of the prostatic portion of the urethra and of the 
orifices of the ejaculatory ducts, conditions which are fre- 



SELF-ABUSE. 513 

quently maintained and aggravated by stricture of the passage 
anterior to them." 

At the risk of being somewhat tedious, I have lingered upon 
this topic of an irritated urethra, because it is the key to the 
whole subject, often ignored, and carries upon its face the 
answer to the question why it is not enough to tell the mastur- 
bator to simply stop his evil practice. This over-sensitive pros- 
tatic surface bears the same relation to the disorder, that the 
abnormal appetite bears to drunkenness and opium eating. 

There are other changes . The quality the of reproductive fluid 
is altered. The spermatozoids are deformed or absent. Bar- 
tholow is contradictory again on this point, quoting Liegeois,* 
to the effect that the semen suffers no change, "not even in the 
number or the configuration of the spermatozoa; " and adding,, 
"This accords with my own observation." Yet asserting in 
another place f that " the spermatozoa are deficient in size and 
activity, and are imperfect in development." The weight of 
testimony is all in favor of the latter statement. "Heitzman 
found that the heads of the zoosperms were not much 
wider than their tails, and that their movements were very 
feeble." u The investigations of Rosenthal, Ultzmann, and 
Curschmann demonstrate that, when potence is as yet little 
affected, and pollutions are merely beginning to overstep the 
natural limits, the ejaculated fluid is unchanged. When the 
pollutions are more frequent, and there are diurnal discharges, 
the spermatozoa are smaller and more scanty ; their movements 
are less active than in the normal condition, are liable to be 
abolished in less than an hour, and are incapable of being 
reawakened by alkaline solutions. In the worst cases, or in 
those characterized by diurnal and nocturnal pollutions, and by 
the presence of semen in the urine, the spermatozoa are either 
entirely absent, or, if they are present, they are motionless, 
stunted, or variously deformed." 

-Page 21. f Page 34. (33) 



514: SELF- ABUSE. 

Stricture is usually present, but not to a degree attracting the 
patient's attention. " In the papers already referred to I 
endeavored to show that confirmed masturbation is just as sure 
to result in urethritis and the formation of a stricture as is 
gleet; and that the failure to discover this lesion would not have 
occurred to the majority of writers on the subject if they had 
resorted to the bulbous bougie for exploring the urethra. Of 
the sixty-nine masturbators who suffered from atonic impotence, 
and of the seventy who had seminal incontinence, as will be 
seen in the chapter on spermatorrhoea, or of one hundred and 
thirty-nine in all, only eighteen were free from stricture, so that 
a coarctation should always be looked for in this class of sub- 
jects."* 

Incidentally, mention has been made of impotence. It is of 
that kind resulting in part from the changes already enumerated, 
and partly from the loss of tone and vigor pervading the -entire 
apparatus, consequent upon its abuse ; just as abuse of the eyes 
is followed by impairment of vision. This being the case, 
abandonment of the vicious habit, and such enlightened aid as 
modern medicine can give, — in short, those measures which will 
restore the patient's health as a whole, local and general, will 
restore as well the temporarily impaired or lost virility. One of 
the most common fears of masturbators, and of the victims of 
imaginary spermatorrhoea, is that of impotence. The tempo- 
rary, atonic form is common, and recovery the rule ; while the 
genuine, idiopathic form of impotence, which is the real spectre 
of their vision, is an exceedingly rare affection. It is pleasant 
to note this, for there is a vast amount of needless anxiety suf- 
fered because of this apprehension. All the evil consequences, 
local and general, resulting from masturbation and sperma- 
torrhoea, may be made to fade into the background and disap- 
pear by the high purpose of the patient and the kindly aid of 
the physician. Medicine can always erect an arch of triumph 

* Gross. 



SELF-ABUSE. 515 

when it is able to place its finger upon the guilty cause of dis 
-ease. With the disease in question the causes, remote and 
immediate, are so unmistakable, that when the patient and the 
physician join hands for the conflict, victory is assured. The 
physician need not be baffled, save when the patient refuses to 
be his ally. 

Joining forces in this combat, it is the patient's part to 
renounce his habit of self-abuse ; the physician's part to over- 
come the state of irritation and inflammation existing within the 
prostatic urethra. In so doing each aids the other in his special 
department of the work. For it would be useless for the 
physician, on the one hand, to attempt to work against a con- 
tinually acting original eause ; while, on the other hand, the 
quieting of the induced local stimulus is an immense aid to the 
patient in refraining from evil thoughts and practices. Without 
this help, it is a desperately hard task for him to empty him- 
self of licentious imaginings and vicious habits; and fill him- 
self with worthy purposes. 

This extinguishing of a constant source of incitement to base 
practices, is so important a part of the treatment that Acton 
hardly makes mention of any remedies beyond the local meas- 
ures for the accomplishment of this specific purpose. His 
method is to fill the urethra, by the aid of an appropriately 
fashioned syringe, with a solution of Nitrate of Silver, ten 
grains to the ounce of water, the whole of the injected fluid 
being allowed to pass out at once into a receptacle held in read- 
iness for it. He requires the patient to abstain from all fluids 
for some hours previous to the operation, and to retain the urine 
as long as possible thereafter, not passing any for perhaps 
twelve hours. Immediately after the operation, and at inter- 
vals of eight hours thereafter, he administers a copaiba capsule 
to lessen the resulting irritation. This injection is supposed to 
act as a mild caustic ; but experience with Nitrate of Silver, here 
and upon other mucous membranes, seems to justify" the belief 



516 SELF- ABUSE. 

that it has a specific influence of its own upon these tissues,, 
aside from its merely caustic action. 

At any rate, this procedure is a very successful one. The 
pain connected with it is slight, much less than would be sup- 
posed, and relapses of the local condition calling for a repeti- 
tion of the operation, are unusual. There is no doubt of its 
success and efficiency, and I should strongly urge the adoption 
of this measure, were not an even better and simpler way open, 
to us by which the same end is attained. The passage of an 
ordinary conical steel sound, of size adapted to that of the 
patient's urethra, once in two or three days at the beginning, 
increasing the frequency of its introduction and the time of its 
retention as the tolerance of the urethra increases, is a simple, 
common sense procedure yielding the most satisfactory results. 
I fully concur with surgeon S. W. Gross' hearty recommenda- 
tion of this measure. He adds that in his experience there will 
be left, in many cases, a small, probably granular, patch of 
sensitive surface. To this spot he makes application of a thirty 
grain solution of Nitrate of Silver ; and repeats every four days, 
until the inflamed and over-sensitive place disappears, and the 
cure is complete. " Of the local remedies," he says, "the 
conical steel bougie (he evidently uses the word as synonymous 
with sound) occupies the first rank ; but when the inflammation 
and tenderness are reduced to a circumscribed area which 
includes the openings of the ejaculatory ducts, it should give 
way to the application of Nitrate of Silver, a remedy which is 
usually decried by physicians who appear to have no practical 
experience with medication of the urethra, but which is highly 
recommended by such men as Trousseau, Niemeyer, C. Hand- 
field Jones, and Rosenthal, and by the most eminent surgeons." 
This application of Nitrate of Silver I have not found necessary. 
The use of the sound, together with the internal administration 
of the indicated remedies, has been sufficient. If, however, it 
should be needed in any case to complete the restoration of the 



SELF- ABUSE. 517 

urethra to its normal condition, it will prove a certain and effi- 
cient agent. Any existing strictures must, of course, be defined 
and divided in the usual way, as they tend to become sources 
of renewed trouble if allowed to remain. 

There are also internal remedies of marked efficiency in aid- 
ing the restoration of the reproductive apparatus to its normal 
tone and tranquillity, and obviating any symptoms of spinal irrita- 
tion which may have supervened. At the head of the list 
stands Atropia. In daily doses of from one-sixtieth to one 
two-hundredth of a grain, it has yielded in my hands the most 
satisfactory results. The testimony in it3 favor is beginning to 
come in. Stephanides tells of his success with it, in a single 
evening dose of one one-hundredth of a grain. "Dr. Nowat- 
schek reports (Schmidt's Jahrbucher, January, 1881), a case of 
spermatorrhoea consequent on typhoid fever, the diagnosis rest- 
ing on the presence of spermatozoa in fluid which was constantly 
oozing from the urethra. Iron, Quinia, and cold applications to 
the genitals were tried in succession with some relief. Lupulin, 
Camphor, and Bromide of Potassium were without effect. 
Atropia was then used, and the patient completely recovered in 
five days. Dr. Nowatschek (Journal de Medicine de Paris, 
October 8, 1881), cites a second case treated with equal success 
by the hypodermic injection, in the perineum, of a one per 
oent solution of Atropia."* Gross asserts; — "Under all cir- 
cumstances, thirty grains of Bromide of Potassium, along with 
about ten drops of the fluid extract of Gelsemium, every eight 
hours, and one-sixtieth of a grain of Sulphate of Atropia on 
retiring, are worth all the other internal remedies combined. 
'* Not only does Atropia diminish the reflex mobility 

of the genito-spinal center, but the recent researches of Keu- 
chel, Heidenhain, and Strieker and Spina, show that it para- 
lyzes the movements of the cells of the acinous glands and checks 
•their secretion, so that it cannot be dispensed with." This 

*Medical Review. Chicago, January 1, 1882. 



518 SELF- ABUSE. 

citation is made for the sake of its testimony regarding Atropia ; 
not as in any sense endorsing the massive dosing with Bromide 
of Potassium and Gelsemium, against which a vigorous protest 
should be raised. To saturate the system with drugs is always 
a reprehensible proceeding, always a hurt rather than a help. 

Agnus Castus is a remedy that, in effectiveness, comes close 
up to Atropia. Its direct action in extinguishing the excited 
conditions of the generative organs, is marked. It is well 
known that in the ancient feasts of Ceres, the leaves of the 
plant were spread upon the couches to keep licentious 
thoughts away. Doses of from one to live drops of the tinc- 
ture, as prepared by the homoeopathic pharmacies, taken once 
or twice daily, have given me very gratifying results. 

Hops have played a curious part among the remedies for the 
disorder under consideration. They have been lauded as 
the one great remedy, only to be quickly tabooed as altogether 
unreliable. So it has come about that in recent years hops have 
received small attention at the hands of physicians. It is pos- 
sible that the preparations of the drug may have been at fault. 
At any rate, I find that no less a man than Dr. G-eo. W. Win- 
ter burn, of New York, has had some favorable experience 
with the plant. He says ; — " Lupulin is the active principle of 
hops, existing in the strobiles, which often contain as high as 
eight per cent of this substance. It is a yellowish powder, 
and is prepared by mechanical separation from the female flow- 
ers. As many specimens of hops are nearly destitute of this 
active principle, the only preparations admissible are tritura- 
tions of Lupulin. Our Materia Medica men are utterly silent 
as to its virtues. Even Allen gives it but meagre notice. And 
yet it has decided therapeutic value. * * In sperma- 
torrhoea it is often of great value, and in several cases I have 
had really extraordinary success with it. In these cases there 
has been marked inability to think rapidly ; pronounced leth- 
argy of all the faculties ; sense of weakness in the brain ; great 



SELF- ABUSE. 519 

nervous irritability ; insomnia ; and itching, soreness, or burn- 
ing m the genitals. I have used it in the second, third, and 
sixth decimal potencies."* 

Of Bromide of Potassium I cannot speak from experience, 
though it possesses a considerable degree of popularity. Harts- 
hornef says of it; — " Bromide of Potassium is, however, the 
medicine of the day for reducing excitability of organs subject 
to reflex action. Twenty grains at bedtime, every night, will, 
according to my observation in practice, make a great difference 
in those who are troubled with frequent nocturnal discharges." 
BurtJ claims that it u is a precious remedy in spermatorrhoea, 
before the paralytic symptoms have set in ; * but it must be 
given in from iive to fifteen grains at a dose three times a day, 
to subdue the condition of plethera." I have already expressed 
my disapproval of any such bombardment of the system as 
this. The general experience with this drug in nervous disor 
ders, has been that no matter how brilliant the first results of its 
administration might be, ultimate disappointment was pretty 
sure to follow. It is not a drug which commands the physi- 
cian's hearty confidence. 

Small§ speaks favorably of Cannabis Sativa as having been 
" prescribed successfully when urethral inflammation has excited 
seminal emissions." Baehr has been an enthusiastic cham- 
pion for Digitallin, which he regards as the remedy. It has 
disappointed me as much in some cases as it has pleased me in 
others ; and probably the pharmaceutical uncertainties surround- 
ing the preparation of the drug itself, will prevent its place 
being properly defined, and to a great extent thwart its possi- 
bilities of usefulness. Electricity, in various currents and 
modes of administration, undoubtedly deserves the high praise 
accorded to it in certain quarters. Here, as everywhere else, 

*Hahnemannian Monthly. December, 1883. 
f Essentials of Practical Medicine. 
iMateria Medica. 
^Decline of Manhood. 



520 SELF-ABUSE. 

its aid is seldom invoked until other means have failed. Its 
position in medicine is chiefly that of a last resort. Were it 
our only remedy for the difficulty in question, there is little 
doubt that it would be found a widely applicable and efficient 
agent. Cantharis, Cinchona, Conium, Ergot, Nux Vomica, 
Phosphorus, Phosphoric Acid, Picric Acid, and Sepia, have 
proved themselves serviceable in certain cases. 

I have thus outlined the more enlightened treatment of to-day, 
not because it would be best for any one to undertake his own 
case. It would be folly to throw away the intelligent assist- 
ance of the physician. But the day of mysticism in medicine 
has passed away. A new era has dawned, and the number of 
those who prefer to work with the physician, understanding 
both the nature of their complaint, and the means used to 
remove it, is daily increasing. The people nowadays wish to 
know about these things, and it is a pleasure to minister to so 
laudable a desire ; especially as the intelligent co-operation of 
the patient insures a more satisfactory result. But though the 
treatment so far considered belongs exclusively to the judgment 
and superintendency of the physician, it is not by any means the 
whole treatment to be employed. There is another side to the 
treatment just as important as the medical and surgical, which 
the patient alone is competent to inaugurate and see faithfully 
carried out. 

That he must first of all relinquish his deplorable habit, has 
already been pointed out. That is but the beginning of his 
work. He must not for one moment forget that idleness is as 
dangerous for him as is the smell of whisky for a reformed 
drunkard. Occupation of mind and body during every waking 
moment is the great desideratum. Said Thackeray to a friend, 
as they one day stood gazing at the statue of Perseus grappling 
with the monster, — " What is your Dragon?" "Luxury and 
indolence," was the reply. "Ah!" said the great novelist, 
" those are just mine too." The only way to keep out evil 



SELF- ABUSE. 521 

imaginations and desires, is to be filled so full with good ones 
that there shall not be an inch of standing room left for any 
thing else. Hartshorne says; — "The true cure for slavery to 
this propensity is to be found in manly exercise and incessant 
occupation, away from all provocatives of sexual desire." 
And this incessant occupation must be full of purpose, or it 
will fail of its object. It would be useless to say I will conquer, 
and therefore I will walk twenty miles a day. A walk that 
takes you nowhere may do for recreation, but is a wretched 
excuse for an occupation. Such tread-mill performances will 
never lift any man out of the mire. Select carefully some line 
of action which you are satisfied to make your life work, and 
pitch in with all your might. The energy thus expended not 
being merely or chiefly a price paid for health, but just what 
you would be dealing telling blows upon if a Hercules, you will 
find that the work goes on by its own momentum ; that you do 
not have to scourge yourself to it each morning by an irksome 
effort of the will ; that it is easy to become completely absorbed 
in it, to put your heart in it. It is a grand way of killing two 
birds with one stone. 

Do not be doubtful because you feel that your highest ambi- 
tion would call you to work of head rather than hand. Some 
of the ways of preserving the best mental and physical health 
have been elsewhere pointed out. Mind and body should be 
not aliens, but allies. If you have the will, there will be no 
lack of ways for preserving a fine balance between the two. 
Keep your wits about you, and you will not long be in doubt as 
to what is the best form of exercise for your individual needs. 
Do not take to walking merely because it saves you the trouble 
of thinking out a better way. "Excessive walking," says 
Dr. Acton, "I find objectionable, as if carried to any extent it 
will produce determination of the blood to the sexual organs 
and subsequent emissions ; the same objection may be urged 
against riding on horseback." So speaks an Englishman, one 



522 SELF- ABUSE . 

of that nation of walkers. Proper attention to the physical 
man, if one's occupation be sedentary, will insensibly correct, 
three of your greatest annoyances. It will change your consti- 
pation into regularity ; your hot head will become cool ; and 
your cold feet warm. How important these three points are is 
well illustrated by the story, already told of, Hermann Boerhaave, 
the great Dutch physician. Professor of Medicine at Ley den, and 
autkor of works upon the same, he left behind him at his death 
a richly bound golden-clasped volume which contained, as he 
had claimed, all the secrets of the art. When opened it was 
found to contain the following injunctions; — "Keep the head 
cool, the feet warm, and the bowels open." 

Attention to the welfare of your body does not mean safety 
from disease alone ; it means a keener wit, a stronger intellect, 
a clearer perception. Attention to the welfare of your body is 
care expended just as directly in the line of your success if your 
work be mental, as if it were that of the professional athlete. 
With purpose, then, in your physical work, and purpose in your 
mental work, your days may be made purposeful throughout — 
filled to the brim with purposeful activity ; and you will find 
this at the same time the shortest road to victory over salacity. 
Let no day stand before you as your own ; but worthily pre- 
empted from its very sunrise. Idleness will ruin you. In the 
words of John Stuart Blackie, late Professor of Greek in the 
University of Edinburg; — " I don't know a better advice to a 
young man than never to be idle. It is one of those negative 
sort of precepts that impart no motive force to the will ; but 
though negations seem barren to keep out the devil by a strong 
bolt, they may prove in the end not the worst receipt for admit- 
ting the good spirit into confidence. A man certainly should 
not circumscribe his activity by any inflexible fence of rigid 
rules ; such a formal metbodism of conduct springs from nar- 
rowness, and can only end in more narrowness ; but it is of the 
utmost importance to commence early with an economical r»se 



SELF- ABUSE. 523 

of time, and this is only possible by means of order and system. 
No young person can go far wrong who devotes a certain amount 
of time regularly to a definite course of work ; how much that 
portion of time should be, of course depends on circumstances ; 
but let it, at all events, be filled up with a prescribed continuity 
of something ; one hour a day persistently devoted to one 
thing, like a small seed, will yield a large increase at the year's 
end. Random activity, jumping from one thing to another 
without a plan, is little better, in respect of any valuable 
intellectual result, than absolute idleness. An idle man is like 
a housekeeper who keeps the doors open for any burglar. It is 
is a grand safeguard when a man can say, I have no time for 
nonsense ; no call for unreasonable dissipation ; no need for 
that sort of stimulus which wastes itself in mere titillation ; 
variety of occupation is my greatest pleasure, and when my 
task is finished I know how to lie fallow, and with soothing rest 
prepare myself for another bout of action. The best preven- 
tive against idleness is to start with the deep-seated conviction 
of the earnestness of life. Whatever men say of the world, it 
is certainly no stage for trifling ; in a scene where all are at 
work, idleness can lead only to wreck and ruin. ' Life is short, 

ART LONG, OPPORTUNITY FLEETING, EXPERIMENT SLIPPERY, JUDG- 
MENT difficult.' These are the first words of the medical 
aphorisms of the wise Hippocrates ; they were set down as a 
significant sign at the porch of the benevolent science of heal- 
ing more than 500 years before the Christian era ; and they 
remain still, the wisest text which a man can take with him as 
a directory into any sphere of effective social activity. ' ' 

The bath is another important factor in the treatment depend- 
ent upon the patient's own doing. The importance of general 
and local cleanliness has been elsewhere considered. There 
remains for our consideration here only the stupid blunder of 
cold affusions so generally recommended for the difficulty in 
hand. If you want to know about the calming influence of 



-524 SELF ABUSE. 

cold, freeze your ears and note the result. It is nonsense to 
talk of cold affusions to a man suffering from genital irritability 
and excitement. From them he can get only momentary 
advantage, and that, too, at the price of subsequent aggrava- 
tion of his complaint. Any one who has noted the effect 
upon the hands of immersion in hot water, will be prepared to 
expect benefit from hot rather than cold affusions. And this 
expectation is verified by experience. Hot sitz-baths are decid- 
edly helpful. Such a bath, prolonged to ten or fifteen minutes, 
night and morning, you will find one of your very best aids. 

There are certain self-denials which no man will object to put 
in practice who is sincerely desirous of being lifted out of the 
pit into which he has fallen . In matters social there are three 
restrictions which suggest themselves as being eminently sensi- 
ble. They have reference to bed-time, the dance, and the thea- 
tre. On the first point, you will be wise to make it your rule to 
be in bed by half-past nine or ten o'clock. Eemember, you are 
to be a man with purpose ; and no young man who hopes ever 
to accomplish anything in this world, can afford to keep later 
hours than these. Rise in the morning as early as you please, 
but retire promptly between nine and ten. Of course there 
will be exceptions to this rule, but be sure that you don't turn 
the matter about and make the rule the exception and the 
exception the rule. And don't construe the suggestion as an 
indirect hit at social intercourse. Go straight into good com- 
pany whenever you have the time to do so, and carry a clean, 
honest, hearty face into it, and an honest heart which is fully 
resolved now and forever to do and think the right, no matter 
what the sins and mistakes of the past may have been. Such 
u mingling as this in the company of those who are your natural 
companions, will strengthen and help you. It is greatly to be 
preferred to solitude afar off. In the words of Thackeray, "all 
•amusements of youth to which virtuous women are not admitted 
<are, rely on it, deliterious in their nature. All men who avoid 



SELF- ABUSE. 525 

female society have dull perceptions and are stupid, or have gross 
tastes and revolt against what is pure. " ; ' There is no doubt, how- 
ever, says" Dr. Hartshorne, ; ' that some of the amusements which 
are popul-ar, and some usages of society, make more easy the fall 
of young men into destructive habits. The ballet and melodra- 
matic pantomime, the waltz, and the £ German ' excite sexual 
feelings and impulses for which, with the unmarried, there is 
no legitimate gratification." 

This brings us to the second point, that of the dance. This 
is not the place to enter into a discussion of the merits and 
demerits of the dance of modern society. It is a question upon 
which good people, people sincerely desiring to do right, differ. 
Our inquiry is not what may be best for mankind in general, 
but what is best for him who is suffering from a specific phys- 
ical weakness. Our desire is to recognize and put far from us^ 
any impediment to the recovery of our perfect manhood. 
Unquestionably the dance is an impediment, and a serious one 
too. There is no one who has sinned and suffered, who sin- 
cerely labors and longs for restoration rather than for the pleas- 
ing of a depraved appetite — there is not one who does not 
know that the dance ranks among his worst enemies. Do not 
touch it, do not have anything to do with it, as you value your 
life. What society in general may think about it is nothing to 
you ; you must avoid it as a sick man would poison. Possibly 
the well may be able to stand it. That is none of our business 
just now. Because they all do it, is the poorest reason in the 
world for doing anything. 

As for the theatre and opera, steer clear of them, and the 
dry rot with which they honeycomb their followers. Notice 
the difference between the theatre and the dance. The mechan- 
ics of the dance tend to excite local impulses which were better 
without such stimulus ; the plots of the stage paralyze all sense 
of the earnestness of life, befog the distinctions between right 
and wrong, virtue and vice, represent the sum of that life which 



526 SELF- ABUSE. 

is worth living as a nondescript haggis of love and lust, and so 
from the opposite sphere of a man's being, excites the same 
undesirable stimulus to lechery. It is true that with the thea- 
tre, as with the dance, the cogent objection may be raised of 
late hours. But that is not the real point at issue . The final 
stand made for the theatre is upon the ground of the Shake- 
spearean drama. I do not see that the theatre can logically hold 
this ground for one moment. That the works of Shakespeare may 
be of great value for their wit, wisdom, and pathos, is by no means 
a reason why their spectacular presentation should be ought 
else than brutalizing. We were glad to have our households 
read in our newspapers that Guiteau had been executed, and 
thereby justice satisfied and the law vindicated. But how 
should we feel if they went night after night to see the execu- 
tion dramatized, its hideous reality brought out as perfectly as 
ssible. The difference between reading and dramatizing may 
* the difference between reading with obedience the decalogue, 
and haunting scenes of robbery, murder, and prostitution. 
All men unite in paying homage to the character of Jesus the 
Christ, and all were likewise condemnatory of the proposition 
to put any portion of the New Testament scenes upon the stage. 
It won't do for us not to see distinctions clear as daylight. 

The historical defense is the most flimsy of all. The signifi- 
cance of history does not lie in the clothing men have worn. The 
dress of William Shakespeare is a matter of altogether minor 
importance ; and we shall never understand the A B C of his- 
tory until we learn that the power of Washington was not found 
in his wig, nor the poetry of Longfellow in the cut of his Sun- 
day breeches. "In addition to the evidence of play actors and 
managers who have testified as to the pernicious influences of the 
theatre upon its employes, I have this morning the evidence of 
Macready, a name mighty in theatrical circles, a name mighty 
all the world over. Macready, after retiring to Sherborne, 
England, in the evening of his days, wrote these words: 



SELF-ABUSE. 527 

4 None of my children, with my consent, under any pretence, 
shall ever enter the theatre, nor shall they have any visiting 
connection with play actors or actresses.' Macready ought to 
know."* U A converted actor once said to me, while passing a 
play-house in which he had often performed : ' Behind those 
curtains lies Sodom. ' Although sorely pressed to return to his 
old business he said that he would starve sooner than go on the 
stage again. Mrs. Francis Kemble Butler — the last living rep- 
resentative of the most famous histrionic family, of modern 
times — has, in her old age, condemned the stage emphatically. 
As an institution, the American theatre tolerates sensual impurity 
in its performers, and presents scenes of impurity to its 
patrons. If you become one of its patrons, you go into moral 
partnership with the theatre. "+ The theatre eats out from 
within the real manhood and the real man, and leaves nothing 
but the thin shell to hide the hollowness within. You cannot 
afford to submit yourself to any such corrosion. 

There are certain personal habits the careful supervision of 
which will well repay you in vantage-ground gained over the 
common enemy. Novel reading should be strictly avoided. 
Not the reading of the questionable novels merely, but of all 
novels. Warmly seconding all the applause which has been 
offered the great writers of fiction, I only insist that you are a 
sick man, and that the best novel is not the diet for one sick 
with your disorder. I fear me that you would be the worse for 
Scott's '•Ivanhoe," or Dickens' "David Copperfield." Your 
ideas of romance have become abnormal through dissipation, 
and their best restorative is absolute rest. Therefore you will 
<lo well to make your reading as utilitarian as possible. Arts 
and sciences are the best of tonics for you. 

Tea and coffee are two hindrances from which you will do 
well to free yourself. They are both exciting, and excitants are 

*Dr. T. De Witt Talmage. 
fDr. T. L. Cuyler. 



528 SELF-ABUSE. 

just what you are aiming to avoid. Acton speaks so strongly 
as to say that ' ' tea, coffee, and tobacco I look on as so many 
poisons for persons suffering under the nervous depression such 
as we are here speaking of." If you prefer a warm drink, in 
chocolate you will find one free from objectionable qualities, and 
which is a valuable food as well. In the form of the broken 
bean, which is known in our markets as " cocoa," it is far less 
valuable as a food, the decoction made from the coeoa failing to 
represent the nutrient elements. "Used in this way, only a 
portion of the kernel is extracted and consumed, and the bever- 
age presents a closer analogy to tea and coffee than that derived 
from the other cocoa products, which, from being prepared in such 
a way as to lead to the whole substance of the kernel being 
drunk, furnish liquids possessing in addition to the common 
properties of the class, a high nutritive value. In the other 
preparations of cocoa, the kernel is ground to a paste and usu- 
ally incorporated with some diluting material of a starchy or 
saccharine nature to diminish its oily consistence. * Choco- 
late constitutes a superior form of prepared cocoa. 
Containing, as pure cocoa does, twice as much nitrogenous mat- 
ter, and twenty-five times as much fatty matter as wheaten-flour, 
with a notable quantity of starch and an agreeable aroma to 
tempt the palate, it cannot be otherwise than a valuable alimen- 
tary material. It has been compared in this respect to milk."* 
The complaint that we sometimes hear made of chocolate, as 
being too gross and heavy for delicate stomachs, arises from the 
practice of unscrupulous manufacturers who express from the 
bean its natural oil (which no exposure can render rancid), and 
sell it to the pharmacist as "cocoa butter ; " and then add beef 
suet to their product for the sake of appearances. 

It is impossible to eater upon the consideration of any topic 
involving the well-being of the nervous system, and ignore the 
tobacco habit. The inter-relations of the two are so important 

*Pavy on Food and Dietetics. 



SELF-ABUSE. 529 

that they cannot be overlooked. Yet the question of the use 
of tobacco is ordinarily discussed with so little candor and 
logic, with so much bias and heat, that one dislikes to approach 
it. Perhaps we may best preserve our tempers by asking some 
of the more eminent in medicine to speak first. Dr. William 
A. Hammond said recently ; — "If children smoke cigars they 
destroy their nervous systems before they are fully formed, and 
render themselves liable to neuralgia and various functional dis- 
eases of the brain which are certainly calculated to destroy their 
mental force. There is also some evidence to show that tobacco 
in young persons actually interferes with the development of 
the body in regard to size — that it stunts their physical system. 
It certainly impairs digestion, for they cannot use tobacco with- 
out spitting inordinately. The saliva expelled from their bodies 
is one of the most important of the digestive fluids, and the 
proper digestion of the food in the stomach is materially inter- 
fered with when there is not enough saliva left to mix with their 
food before it is swallowed . Again it certainly impairs hearing 
and eyesight. I have seen several instances of young children 
having their eyesight injured seriously, if not irreparably, by 
the use of tobacco. The excessive use of tobacco is injurious 
to everybody, adults as well as infants, male as well as female. 
" Now as to cigarette-smoking. It is injurious to everybody, 
practiced as it ordinarily is by inhaling the smoke in the lungs. 
The use of cigarettes has been increasing to a most extraordi- 
nary degree in this country in the last ten years. I have already 
seen the ill effects of it in my practice, in the production of 
facial neuralgia, insomnia, nervous dyspepsia, sciatica, and an 
indisposition to mental exertion . In young persons all these 
effects are seen with much greater intensity and, consequently, 
the effect upon them is very much worse than upon adults. In 
France the difference between those who smoked cigarettes in 
the polytechnic schools and those who did not, as regarded 

(34) 



530 SELF-ABUSE. 

their positions in their classes, was so great that ^he government 
has prohibited absolutely the use of tobacco in all the govern- 
ment schools. Some time ago I was consulted by Commodore 
Foxhall Parker, then superintendent of the Naval Academy at 
Annapolis, relative to the advisability of allowing the cadets to 
smoke. He stated in his letter that it was almost an impossibility 
to prohibit the practice, and he put the question whether it wasn't 
better to allow them to smoke under regulations than to punish 
them constantly for violation of rules. I replied that that was a 
matter of discipline ; but that, so far as the effects of tobacco 
were concerned, I had no hesitation in saying that its influences 
would be injurious to the cadets, and that I had constant evi- 
dence of it in my private practice and in the course of my 
observations otherwise. Commodore Parker replied that he 
thought what I said was right." 

Dr. Lewis A. Sayre puts himself on record as believing that 
" cigarettes are worse for boys than pipes or cigars. The 
nicotine absorbed from the cigarettes has a very bad effect upon 
the nervous system, and, taken in excess, weakens the action of the 
heart and in that respect diminishes the force of the circulation 
of the blood. This necessarily impairs nutrition of the tissues 
and of the brain itself, independent of the poisonous influence 
of the nicotine upon the brain and nerve tissues. Dryness in 
the mucous membrane of the fauces and larynx is produced, 
and boys who smoke cigarettes are mostly in the habit of 
expelling the smoke through the nostrils, which produces the 
same dryness of the mucous membrane of the nares. Boys 
make chimneys of their noses by exhaling this dry, hot air, and 
destroy the natural sweetness and liquidity of the tones of their 
voices. Every boy who expects to become an orator, with a 
liquid voice, should never smoke a cigarette. The habit also 
causes loss of appetite. If boys smoke cigarettes over night, 
they have no appetite for breakfast, and a growing boy who has 
no relish for his meals is being retarded in his growth and 



SELF-ABUSE. 531 

development. It results in a nervous trembling of the hands, 
and, carried to excess, cigarette-smoking affects the memory. 
1 think paper cigarettes are worse than tobacco cigarettes. It 
may be because the paper absorbs more of the nicotine, which is 
thence carried into the system. Certainly the paper cigarette 
has the worse odor.'' 

"Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, who was the most eminent 
English surgeon of his generation, not long before his death 
sent a communication to the London Times in which he gave 
the result of his observations on the effects of tobacco. He 
was free to concede that its occasional use by men of such active 
and exposed outdoor life as sailors, soldiers and explorers might 
not only be harmless but perhaps beneficial. But he expressed 
the opinion that there are very few tobacco-users, even among 
a people of such active outdoor habits as the English, who do 
not suffer harm from it, and summed up his judgment in the 
pithy statement, ' I cannot entertain a doubt that if we could 
obtain accurate statistics on the subject, we should find that the 
value of life in inveterate smokers is considerably below the 
average. ' 

' ' Dr. Willard Parker stands at the head of his profession in 
New York City, I suppose. He does not hesitate to say — in 
his own handwriting, which lies before me now — that he believes 
tobacco is really doing more harm to-day than rum. To quote his 
own words still further : ; I am sure that in health no one can 
use tobacco without detriment to body, mind and soul. It is a 
poison which slowly but surely destroys life, and a man who 
uses it to any extent is as old at fifty as he would be at sixty 
without it. All who smoke or chew much are more apt to die 
in epidemics, and more prone to apoplexy and paralysis than 
other people. The duty' of abstaining from the slow killing of 
one's self by tobacco is as clear as the duty of not cutting one's 
throat. I apprehend the day is not far distant when the life 
insurance companies will inquire into the influence of 



532 SELF-ABUSE. 

tobacco poison on longevity as they have done in regard to 
alcohol. They have ascertained that the average of life of such 
as become intemperate at twenty is thirty-five years and six 
months ; while the young man of sobriety has an average of 
sixty-four years and two months . There have died in New 
York within a few years three excellent clergymen, all of whom 
would now be alive had they not used tobacco. ' It is of inter- 
est to note, too, that Dr. Parker pronounces smoking more 
harmful than chewing or snuff-taking. 

u Dr. B. W. Richardson, the eminent London practitioner 
who has made a specialty of careful investigations into this and 
kindred causes of nervous disease ; who is a man of marked 
candor and loyalty to facts, wherever they may lead him; 
whose researches are taken by Chambers' Encyclopaedia as the 
basis for its treatise on tobacco ; who is sometimes quoted, on 
the score of his earlier conclusions, as lenient toward a moder- 
ate indulgence in cigars, gives the verdict of his fuller investi- 
gation in his well-known volume on ' The Diseases of Modern 
Life. ' He declares that in the confirmed smoker there is ' a 
constant functional disturbance,' which extends to the blood, 
the stomach, the heart, the lungs, the brain and the nerves. 
That does not leave very much of a man but his hair and his 
bones! He says that the use of tobacco gives a doubtful pleas- 
ure for a certain penalty — that so long as the practice is contin- 
ued the smoker is out of health ; his stomach only parteklly 
digests, his heart labors unnaturally, his blood is not fully oxi- 
dized. So distinct and so certain are its effects that if a com- 
munity of youths of both sexes, whose progenitors were finely 
formed and powerful, were to be trained to the early practice of 
smoking, and marriage were to be confined to the smokers, a 
physically interior race of men and women would be bred. 
From the purely hygienic point of view he unqualifiedly pro- 
nounces the use of tobacco in any form a habit better not 
acquired, and when acquired better abandoned. There is much 



SELF-ABUSE. 533 

more evidence of the same sort. But we do not need it. What- 
ever the legion of smoking physicians may say — estimable men 
and successful practitioners as they may be — after this concurrent 
testimony from three such witnesses as Brodie, and Parker, and 
Kichardson, / cannot be left in any doubt on the subject. I do 
not believe three men to match them can be found in the medi- 
cal profession of the whole world who will give as unqualified 
approval as they give unqualified condemnation of the use of 
tobacco . 

" Every one knows, too, how smoking prevails in the English 
universities. Yet, it is said that nine-tenths of the first-class 
men at Oxford and Cambridge are non-smokers. You have 
seen, perhaps, some suggestive statistics bearing on the rela- 
tions of tobacco to scholarship, which were taken at Yale Col- 
lege a year or two ago. Each class at Yale, it seems, is graded 
in four divisions according to scholarship — the best scholars 
being in the first division, while the fourth is made up of those 
who are barely able ' to hang on by their eyelids. ' The census 
of one class showed that only ten out of the forty in the first 
division were addicted to smoking. In the second division 
eighteen out of thirty-seven used tobacco ; in the third, twenty 
out of twenty-seven ; in the fourth, twenty-two out of twenty- 
six. It might be rash to say that this was a clear case of cause 
and effect, but I am sure it would be more rash to deny any 
such relation. In the same line is another fact which, is a mat- 
ter of history. In 1862 the Emperor Louis Napoleon had his 
attention called to the phenomenon that there were more than 
five times as many paralytics and lunatics in the hospitals of 
France as there were thirty years before, and that the increase 
of government revenue from the tobacco monopoly had risen 
meanwhile in almost the same proportion. He appointed a 
commission of scientific men to examine whether this was a 
case of cause and effect, or only a coincidence. They devoted 
their special attention to the young men in the government 



534 SELF-ABUSE. 

training schools. Dividing the students into two classes, as 
smokers and non-smokers, they found the latter so much supe- 
rior, both physically, mentally and morally, that the Emperor 
at once prohibited the use of tobacco by the students in these 
schools, breaking in one memorable day the pipes of thirty 
thousand young men in Paris alone. When I hear any one 
' sniffing ' at the rule enforced in some of our Western colleges 
forbidding the use of tobacco by students, I always take pleas- 
ure in referring them to Louis JSTapoleon. He was not supposed 
to be fussy or puritanical. 

"Dr. Parker says he has known a man to consume seventy 
grains of opium a day — but then that was all the work he did ! 
And as to Gen. Grant — he is by no means an old man yet, and 
I do not know what the end will be. He was not an habitual 
smoker until he entered upon active campaigning in the late 
war. And his brilliant friend, Senator Carpenter, died recently, 
his system a pitiful wreck when, so far as years went, he ought 
to have been in the prime of his power. And I notice that one 
of Senator Carpenter's acquaintances writes of him: 'Died of 
smoking twenty cigars a day.' 

"But the assumed merit of this sedative is really its serious 
mischief. As some one has said, so forcibly, ' Smoking is an 
unmanly leaning on a solace to care and labor neither sought 
nor needed by women ; enabling the smoker to be idle without 
growing weary of idleness ; tending to take the ambition out of 
him, and to make him happy when he should be miserable, and 
content when his divinest duty is discontent.'"* 

Dr. Roberts Bartholow asserts that "It is high time that 
something were done to put a stop to this frightful evil, which 
is stunting the growth and ruining the health of thousands of 
boys." Dr. Frank H. Hamilton says; — "Tobacco causes neu- 
ralgia, paralysis, especially of the nerve of vision, tremors, etc. 
It impairs the appetite, dries up the fluids, gives a dirty, parch- 

*J. B. T. Marsh, of Obeiiin College. 



SELF-ABUSE. 535 

ment color to the skin, stains the teeth, makes the gums spongy 
and tender, renders the breath foul, and causes not unfrequently 
cancer of the mouth, lips and tongue." 

Such testimony might be multiplied almost indefinitely did 
space permit. It has been prohibited in Phillips Exeter Acad- 
emy, New Hampshire, and in the IT. S. Military and Naval 
Academies of West Point and Annapolis. One school in Phila- 
delphia has a statement of the pernicious effects of tobacco 
pasted inside of the cover of every text-book. If its use by 
those in ordinary health be so objectionable, it is hardly neces- 
sary to point out the added force of the objections to its use 
when the user is one suffering from spermal ejaculations of 
abnormal frequency. It fully justifies Dr. Acton's epithet of 
" poison." It has a directly poisonous effect upon the repro- 
ductive apparatus itself. Dr. Jaquemart, in a late number of 
one of the medical journals of Paris, affirms that abuse of 
tobacco renders men impotent. It has a directly poisonous 
effect upon the general nervous system, which has at least one 
destructive force attacking it already. It has a directly poisonous 
effect upon that purposeful character which alone gives signifi- 
cance to life. The assertion is made that at Harvard no smoking 
student has graduated at the head of his class in the last fifty 
years. I do not fancy that we are to attribute this only or prin- 
cipally to its unfavorable physical effect. In the very nature of 
things, students of the best purpose have no time and no energy 
to waste on tobacco. Its use is either an exceptional inconsis- 
tency of character and habit, or else it is somewhat of an index 
of the earnestness of that character. u I do not advise you, 
young man," says Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, "to consecrate 
the flower of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe, for, let 
me assure you, the stain of a reverie-breeding narcotic may 
strike deeper than you think. I have seen the green leaf of 
early promise grown brown before its time under such nicotian 



536 SELF- ABUSE. 

regimen, and thought the amber' d meerschaum was dearly 
bought at the cost of a brain enfeebled and a will enslaved." 

One hundred years ago it might have been necessary to speak 
of alcoholic beverages at some length, as we have of tobacco. 
At this late date it would seem uncalled for. That alcohol 
inflames the passions is notorious. Besides this, " the percep- 
tions, the emotions, the intellect, amdthe will, are all implicated 
to a greater or less extent. * * * The power of 
application, of appreciating the bearing of facts, of drawing 
distinctions, of exercising the judgment aright, and even of 
comprehension, are all more or less impaired. The sense of 
right and justice which the individual may have had is so weak- 
ened or destroyed that he will lie, steal, murder, or commit 
other outrages, even when there is no provocation."* That 
you should refrain from all beverages containing even the small- 
est percentage of alcohol, goes wMiout saying. 

After all, we must constantly turn from the special to the gen- 
eral, if we would pursue an even course. The danger and dam- 
age of sin against one's own body, and the measures by which 
the physician and patient, as co-workers, can redeem the lost 
manhood, have been considered in detail. Yet I would not 
have your mind occupied with these details. Do not let your 
mind rest upon them. If our eyes are constantly fastened 
upon the ground in search of pitfalls, we shall never see the 
snow-crowned Alps. We must not stand guard over evil, but 
pursue the good. The topic which we have been discussing is 
only one department of self-knowledge, and the whole of self- 
knowledge is only one member of the trinity which should be 
ours. For 

" Self-knowledge, self -reverence, self-control— 
' These three alone lead on to sovereign power." 

"Let every one, therefore," says Professor Blackie, "who 
would not suffer shipwreck on the great voyage of life, stamp 

*Hammond on Diseases of the Nervous System. 



SELF-ABUSE. 537 

seriously into his soul, before all things, the great truth of the 
Scripture text, — 'One thing is needful.' Money is not need- 
ful ; power is not needful ; cleverness is not needful ; fame is 
not needful ; liberty is not needful ; even health is not the one 
thing needful; but character alone— a thoroughly cultivated 
will — is that which can truly save us ; and, if we are not saved 
in this sense, we must certainly be damned. There is no point 
of indifference in this matter, where a man can safely rest, say- 
ing to himself, If I don't get better, I shall certainly not get 
worse. He will unquestionably get worse. The unselfish part 
of his nature, if left uncultivated, will, like every other neglected 
function, tend to shrink into a more meagre vitality and more 
stunted proportions." Lord Byron was a monumental example 
of one who was "not saved." And on his thirty-sixth birthday 
he wrote of himself; — 

" My days are in the yellow leaf ; 

The flowers and fruits of love are gone ; 
The worm, the canker, and the grief 
Are mine alone!" 

Somewhere in ancient story it is narrated of a certain tyrant 
that, for some fancied affront, he condemned a noble woman to 
ride naked upon a horse's back through the streets of her city. 
The hour comes, and her city remembers her. Her honor is 
their own. The streets are deserted. No living thing is to be 
seen. Doors and windows are impenetrably draped. Even the 
cooing doves upon the housetops feel the mighty throbbing 
underneath that solemn stillness, and fly to their little homes to 
hide their heads under their wings. Silence greater than that 
of nature's fastnesses, for it bears the added emphasis of the 
designedly deserted. Startlingly is the stillness broken by the 
loud clatter of hoofs upon the pavement, as the horse and rider 
dash through the streets. Fearlessly does she ride, in a noble- 
ness of seclusion before which that of her own inner chamber 
becomes coarse publicity. Ride on ! Ride on ! O daughter of 



538 SELF-ABUSE. 

the people! Never were kings' daughters adorned with such 
a peerless vesture. Clothed upon with loyal hearts, thou hast a 
garment compared with which all loom-created coverings are 
beggarly. 

Young man, what mounted figures ride through the streets of 
your imagination ? Can this stainless rider, with perfect safety, 
turn her horse's head up the street on which you have your 
dwelling? Will the matchless garment which she wears, crum- 
ble into dust before the house in which you live ? Then rest not 
day nor night until your heart's hottest tears, falling upon the 
white, upturned face of your manhood lying dead, shall call it 
back to being and to life. 

"This is peace — 
To conquer love of self and lust of life, 
To tear deep-rooted passion from the breast, 
To still the inward strife ; 

" For love to clasp Eternal Beauty close ; 
For glory to be Lord of self ; for pleasure 
To live beyond the gods r for countless wealth, 
To lay up lasting treasure 

" Of perfect service rendered, duties done 
In charity, soft speech, and stainless days : 
These riches shall not fade away in life, 
Nor any death dispraise/' 



i 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 

.Roman mythology, among its various deities, included a god- 
dess bearing the name of Venus. This name is still a familiar 
one through the ministry of art, by which means we have come 
to consider it as standing for the perfect type of female beauty 
of person. The ancient Romans did not hesitate to put an even 
better meaning into the word. For with them Yenus was the 
goddess of love and of spring. But the mythology of the nation 
reflected so faithfully the morals of its people, that Yenus must 
needs be degraded by being made the goddess of sexual debauch- 
ery as well. And so it comes about tkat we have a dishonora- 
ble word coined from her name. The word " venereal" has its 
root in the name of this goddess ; and by venereal diseases is 
meant those diseases arising from illegitimate sexual inter- 
course. 

Primarily, they are three in number, and are known as gon- 
orrhoea or clap, chancroid or the soft chancre, and syphilis ; the 
first symptom of the latter being what is known as the " hard " 
or "indurated" chancre. Each one of the three is dependent 
upon a specific animal poison for its propagation, just as is scar- 
let fever or small-pox. Like them also, the disease must be 
introduced by the poison coming in contact with the organism 
through some agency from without. But here the analogy 
ceases. In the venereal diseases atmospheric contagion and 
epidemic influences are absolutely unknown. And although 
some material which has been in contact with the poisoned 
secretion of a diseased person may carry the poison to a healthy 



540 THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 

subject, and inoculate him with it through some abraded surface 
or delicate mucous membrane, yet such an accident is exceed 
ingly rare. With an exception here and there so uncommon as 
to be unworthy of notice, the venereal virus is communicated 
through the sexual act. More than this, the poison of syphilis, 
which is the most formidable of the three by far, once received 
into the system seems never to be banished from it, and years 
after its apparent disappearance it may stamp its blight indeli- 
bly upon the unborn child and the infant. The wide difference, 
then, between this poison and that of contagious and infec- 
tious diseases of other classes, is readily seen without further 
comment. 

It has been already stated that the venereal diseases are due 
to illegitimate sexual intercourse. It is true that they may be 
communicated in the lawful exercise of the function. For the 
vicious may wed the innocent, and the innocent suffer that 
which they abhor, both in person, and by entailment upon off- 
spring. But we have wandered into exceptions again, while the 
great central truth is that these curses follow the profligate, and 
breed in houses of ill-fame, and riot in sexual debauchery and 
prostitution. Within a generation or two the frightful scourge 
of these venereal poisons would disappear from the face of the 
earth were the "social evil'' to cease to exist. This sin against 
chastity is directly responsible for the presence of these dis- 
eases in the world to-day. But for this iniquity, constantly act- 
ing, they would become a matter of history. They flourish or 
wither just in proportion as lust or chastity holds sway. So it 
is fair to speak of this scourge as due to the gratification of law- 
less lust. 

Yet it cannot be positively asserted that through this lechery 
the virus of syphilis or gonorrhoea was first generated ; that the 
violation of the command, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," 
by those who, before, were pure in life and body, supplied the 
necessary conditions by which this worst of poisons known to 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 541 

man sprang into existence. Its origin is lost in the twilight of 
history. Its ravages are as old as the centuries. There is no 
record of its first beginnings. From remote antiquity accurate 
descriptious of these diseases, as then prevailing, have been 
handed down to us. And to-day they so run riot among the 
profligate by virtue of their highly infectious properties, that it 
is impossible to determine whether or not they arise independ- 
ently of contagion, called into existence solely by the condi- 
tions offered in lewd practices. That such is the case has been 
asserted in the hearing of the present writer by a teacher of 
this department in one of our best medical schools; while, on 
the other hand, Drs. Simes and White say that ' c Syphilis is 
communicated only from individual to individual, and never 
appears de novo ; " but it is a question not often discussed. 
Learned authorities canvassing what they are pleased to term 
the " origin" of these disorders, are pleased to consider under 
that head their history only. This is true almost without 
exception. They are satisfied to take these diseases as they 
find them, and as they have been found in the past, and pass 
by any speculations as to just how they may have had their rise. 
Science is supposed to be very particular regarding the accuracy 
of its statements . But whatever refinements of statement and 
demonstration technical science may require of us, the great 
practical fact of the case is that the venereal poisons are to-day 
perpetuated, and to a frightful extent propagated, by licentious 
practices; that they have always been, as they are now, the 
badge of lewdness ; that they would cease to exist were lustful 
orgies to be known among men no more ; that they have their 
origin in salacity, their strength in lechery, their life in lust, 
their whole power and meaning and measure in sexual debauch- 
ery. 

That the divine L. w for the good order of society should be 
enforced with such tr Aj terrific penalties, is enough to compel 
the attention of the most thoughtless. That the mere disregard 



f 

542 THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 

of the institution of marriage, which we have been accustomed 
to look upon as a purely moral regulation, should result in pro- 
found organic disease of the body, shows how truly that institu- 
tion is a divine, or, if you please, a natural, one. For as, 
humanly speaking, all law is of government, and all government 
of law, so, likewise, in the highest sense is it true that all natural 
law is divine, and all divine law natural. So it is with marriage. 
It may be a surprise that profound material changes should 
result from the violation of what you have always considered a 
purely moral law. It is a natural law as well. And the penal- 
ties of natural law are severe and inexorable. Disregard for one 
little moment the law of gravitation, and you are dashed to 
pieces. Stand upon ice only just a little too thin to bear your 
weight, and it costs you your life. So the only safe way is the 
nature-al way. In our haste we write it "natural," and forget 
what it means. And the natural way is the divine way. To 
love nature, to be natural, to live naturally, — how much it 
means. To love and be and practice the opposite, — what tre- 
mendous disaster it invites. Here we catch a glimpse of the 
true explanation of that destruction following close upon the 
track of both solitary vice, and guilty sexual commerce. The 
cold logic of the cosmos, un warmed by the faintest perception 
of right and wrong, should teach us to expect as swift and fatal 
explosion when the fires of lust attack the structure of society, 
as when the fire of the fuse attacks the structure of the dynamite. 
I would not be misunderstood. These few chapters will have 
failed of their purpose if they convey the impression of an indi- 
rect declaration of war against pleasure. Asceticism is not 
lovely, and has no attractions for a healthy-minded boy or man. 
Were any reader to follow these lines with a feeling akin to that 
of the small boy when he complains, u Pa won't ever let me 
have a good time," it would prove either his blindness or the 
failure of these pages to make themselves understood. Seldom 
has anything had a more pleasant sound than the saying of a 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 543 

Christian man, poor, and the head of a large family, spoken a 
few days ago: U I will live happy, or I won't live at all." 
The pursuit of happiness is noble, the pursuit of pleasure is 
right and proper. The giving of pleasure to others is one of 
the sweetest graces. But "fly the pleasure that bites to-mor- 
row." To expose pain, masquerading as pleasure, but u biting 
like a serpent and stinging like an adder," is the present aim. 
This is to be, not the enemy, but the faithful friend of pleasure. 

'• Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood, 
Our greatest evil or our greatest good/' 

To be unhappy and sour is not only wrong — it narrows and dis- 
eases head and heart as well. "In so far as individuals have 
succeeded in overcoming the smile and joy of earth, to that dis- 
tance have they also blighted the other natural powers of the 
soul. In the effort to overthrow pleasure, these men have 
dragged down all else. The mind hastens to pass into a stupor 
when it has become convinced that there is nothing around it 
worth living for. The more the ascetic — be he Pagan or Chris- 
tian, be he Stoic or a Fakir or a Monk— limits the horizon of 
pleasure in the best sense of that word, the more he limits the 
outreachings of the mind and heart, and contracts the powers 
and works of his life. A suicide is a man whose heart has. be- 
come perfectly emptied of joy and the hope of it; and next to 
the suicide stands the ascetic, who holds the theory of the suicide 
but in a less real form ; he has the faith or creed of the suicide, 
but has not yet risen to his practice . 

"A classic orator once spoke so powerfully about the worth- 
lessness of human existence that his addresses were always fol- 
lowed by a sudden increase of suicides. We who from our hap- 
pier era look back, cannot but feel that the hatred some of our 
ancestors cherished for pleasure, made the world seem so small 
and ill-deserving that they did not care to extend toward it their 
esteem or their charity. From the years which they had sown 



r 

544 THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 

broadcast with their hatred of laughter, they reaped a harvest 
of indifference and coldness of soul. * * * 

"Happiness thus revealing itself as a lawful and noble and 
universal pursuit, it must now be asked what happiness is it 
that is so lawful and noble ? It must be a happiness that does 
not conflict with morality. Pleasure sought by a violation of 
any law of health or of conscience or of society, is only a pain 
delayed. The so-called 4 daughters of joy' are the daughters of 
infinite grief. * * Happiness is much like money — money 
must represent an actuality. It must stand for some stored-up 
labor of individual or nation. If a man has earned a farm or a 
house or has digged a pot of gold, he may issue bills of paper 
almost to the amount of value in his farm or house or pot of 
gold ; but should he issue checks or drafts to ten times the value 
of his reality, his bills must decline to ten cents on the dollar so 
as to harmonize with his possessions. No man and no State, 
however powerful, can create a value. No State can make land 
or make a wheat-crop. Their bills of exchange must represent 
what is. * It is much thus with pleasure. Man cannot wander 
much beyond his absolute possession of power and right. An 
over-drinking, an over-eating, an over-tax of mind or body is an 
over-issue of drafts ; and lo, on the morrow, an awful deprecia- 
tion of body and mind and soul is reported on street and 'change 
and in the church circles, and in that most tender and tearful 
place — the home. You see on the streets daily persons, male 
and female, who years ago discounted too heavily their future, 
and now the time is out. The health of the body and of the 
mind, the welfare of self and of society, the eternal laws of God — 
these are realities upon which all may issue their pleasure-notes, 
but the instant you go beyond these actualities you become a 
defaulter — you are no longer in the vale of pleasure, but of 
pain."* 

*Professor David Swing in Motives of Life. 



THE VENEKEAL DISEASES. 545 

There are some very good people who talk to us about pleasure, 
and gain our assent and attention, and then at the last suddenly 
change the quality of all they have said by adding "we mean 
pleasure in the best sense of that word. ' ' Although their in- 
tentions may be of the best, it is not a square and honest way of 
doing. We don't like it. We ought not to like it. They have 
gained our mental sanction of what they have been saying, by a 
trick, and we should always have a sturdy contempt for tricks. 
They have made sure that we should not dissent from their 
propositions as they laid them down, by keeping us in ignorance 
of their real meaning. They have attempted to entrap us into 
an indorsement of what we do not believe ; and for the sake of 
mental honesty we ought to resent it. It is right that we 
should. No such trap has been set in these pages. When the 
words u pleasure" and u happiness" are used, they are used in 
the ordinary and commonly accepted sense ; if you will, in a 
worldly sense. In the most earthy sense imaginable, it would 
not pay to spend a fortune in one single day of feasting and 
revelry in the midst of luxurious surroundings gorgeous beyond 
description, only to wake on the morrow to a life of want and 
hunger and misery and disease. It would not pay, though 
judged by no higher standard than how to get the most bodily 
enjoyment out of a given amount of money. Men governed by 
no other motive than this would be unanimous in pronouncing 
against such a course. So it is with pleasure set over against 
the courtesan. There is no sense in which the word pleasure 
can be used which is worldly, earthy, low, sensual, devilish 
enough to make it true that the house of the harlot is anything 
else but a bitter cheat as a source of pleasure. " Truly," says 
the French savant, Dr. Bourgeois, ' ; man ought to know well 
all the evils with which he is threatened by the abuse of sensual 
pleasures. He ought to know what these mistakes of a disor- 
dered passion, these intoxications with immoderate lust, must 

(35) 



546 THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 

cost for his soul, for his body, for his health, for the duration of 
his life, for his progeny." 

Forewarned is forearmed. The pulpit, the professor's chair, 
the teacher's desk, have not been sufficiently explicit here. "We 
must use plain speech if we wish to be understood. We must 
be definite if we wish to accomplish anything. Generalities go 
for nothing. When the subject is approached at all, it is with 
such very thick gloves that the youth is left with the impression 
that some vague spiritual detriment is predicted ; and too often 
in the youthful mind the spiritual is set down as synonymous 
with the unreal. He should be made to understand, distinctly 
that this matter is as real as leprosy and as grim as death. He 
should be taught four things. First, That the Bible gives an 
accurate account of the matter, closely describing its every-day 
workings, and emphasizing its physical penalties, as well as 
those pertaining to character. Second, That the evil really 
exists ; is practical, not theoretical ; and that he himself will 
surely be called upon, sooner or later, to meet this temptation. 
Third, That successful men of affairs in the world are keenly 
alive to the danger and the disaster which hover round all those 
over whom the social evil has thrown one little corner of its 
black, leprous mantle. Fourth, Just what the diseases entailed 
are, as encountered by medical science. 

I. It is not necessary to transfer to these pages the long code of 
the Mosaic law against every kind of social uncleanness. It lies 
before us in an open book. We all know where to find it, and 
may read if we will. They are stern regulations, those statutes 
of the Hebrew lawgiver, with their free use of the death penalty. 
But I would copy for you here what you may not have read, and 
very possibly might not know where to find. They are not the 
words of inspiration alone. They are the words of experience 
as well. Solomon was a king. His reign - did not fall within 
those years marked by the simplicity and frugality which attend 
the earlier years of a nation's founding. Neither did he sit upon 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 547 

the throne in the days of decadence and disaster, when we might 
justly expect to hear the sombre utterances of one filled with 
musings as to the cause of the nation's downfall. On the con- 
trary, he sat in the seat of supreme power when the nation he 
ruled was at the very summit of its career. Surrounded by all 
the luxury and magnificence of untold wealth and unlimited 
power; king and people alike enjoying an unparalleled pros- 
perity ; he himself gifted with distinguished wisdom ; at once 
king, poet, philosopher, architect, of fine presence, generous 
and sympathetic, yet living in an age in which the natural law 
governing marriage was as little understood as the natural law 
governing the telephone, it would seem that no better condi- 
tions could possibly be brought together for the making of a 
scientific experiment which should finally settle the social ques- 
tion. 

And he made the experiment. Made it with a harem num- 
bering one thousand inmates. Made it not for himself alone, 
but for our benefit as well. For he does not keep silence. He 
has a great deal to say about these things. And no one has a 
better claim upon our attention. In the words of a British sur- 
geon; "If you will not believe the bachelor Paul in his denun- 
ciations of fornication, listen to the old rake Solomon, who 
knew more about this matter than most men." But before we 
hear what he has to say, let us be sure that we understand his 
language. We shall find him speaking of the ' ; strange woman. ' ' 
By that term is meant precisely what we understand the words 
harlot and prostitute to mean. It may be an unnecessary ex- 
planation; but I well remember reading some of Solomon's 
words when that phrase was to me an entire mystery, and the 
warnings therefore uncomprehended. In matters of great im- 
portance we cannot afford to run even small risk of misunder- 
standing. 

With this explanation, what do we find his testimony to be '! 
The first thing we come upon in his writings regarding these 



548 THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 

matters is this : " When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and 
knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul ; discretion shall preserve 
thee, understanding shall keep thee: * * to deliver thee 
from the strange woman, even from the stranger which flattereth 
with her words; which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and 
forgetteth the covenant of her God. For her house inclineth 
unto death, and her paths unto the dead. None that go unto 
her return again, neither take they hold of the paths of life." 
We turn over the leaf and come upon this : " For the lips of a 
strange woman drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother 
than oil : but her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two- 
edged sword. Her feet go down to death ; her steps take hold 
on hell. Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways 
are moveable, that thou canst not know them. Hear me now 
therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my 
mouth. Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the 
door of her house : lest thou give thine honor unto others, and 
thy years unto the cruel: lest strangers be filled with thy 
wealth ; and thy labors be in the house of a stranger ; and thou 
mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, 
and say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised 
reproof; and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor 
inclined mine ear to them that instructed me. * * And why 
wilt thou, my son, be ravished with a strange woman, and em- 
brace the bosom of a stranger ? For the ways of man are before 
the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goings. His 
own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be 
holden with the cords of his sins. He shall die without instruc- 
tion ;. and in the greatness of his folly he shall go astray." 

Still is he not satisfied. Soon he takes up the burden of 
his warning anew. "My son, keep thy father's commandment, 
and forsake not the law of thy mother : bind them continually 
upon thine heart, and tie them about thy neck. When thou 
goest, it shall lead thee ; when thou sleepest, it shall keep thee ; 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 549 

and when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee. For the com- 
mandment is a lamp ; and the law is light ; and reproofs of 
instruction are the way of life: to keep thee from the evil 
woman, from the flattery of the tongue of a strange woman. 
Lust not after her beauty in thine heart ; neither let her take 
thee with her eyelids. For by means of a whorish woman a man 
is brought to a piece of bread : and the adulteress will hunt for 
the precious life. Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his 
clothes not be burned ? Can one go upon hot coals, and his 
feet not be burned ? So he that goeth in to his neighbor's wife ; 
whosoever toucheth her shall not be innocent. Men do not 
despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry ; 
but if he be found, he shall restore sevenfold ; he shall give all 
the substance of his house. But whoso committetb adultery 
with a woman lacketh understanding : he that doeth it destroy- 
eth his own soul. A wound and dishonor shall he get ; and 
his reproach shall not be wiped away . For jealousy is the rage 
of a man : therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance. 
He will not regard any ransom ; neither will he rest content, 
though thou givest many gifts. 

"My son, keep my words, and lay up my commandments 
with thee. Keep my commandments, and live ; and my law as 
the apple of thine eye. Bind them upon thy fingers, write 
them upon the table of thine heart. Say unto wisdom, Thou 
art my sister ; and call understanding thy kinswoman : that 
they may keep thee from the strange woman, from the stranger 
which flattereth with her words. For at the window of my 
house I looked through my casement, and beheld among the 
simple ones, I discerned among the youths, a young man void 
ot understanding, passing through the street near her corner ; 
and he went the way to her house, in the twilight, in the even- 
ing, in the black and dark night : and, behold, there met him a 
woman with the attire of a harlot, and subtile of heart. (She 
is loud and stubborn ; her feet abide not in her house : now is 
she without, now in the streets, and lieth in wait at every cor- 



550 THE VINEREAL DISEASES. 

ner.) So she caught him, and kissed him, and with an impu- 
dent face said unto him, I have peace offerings with me ; this 
day have I paid my vows. Therefore came I forth to meet 
thee, diligently to seek thy face, and I have found thee. I have 
decked my bed with coverings of tapestry, with carved works, 
with fine linen of Egypt. 1 have perfumed my bed with myrrh, 
aloes, and cinnamon. Come, let us take our fill of love until 
the morning: let us solace ourselves with loves. For the good- 
man is not at home, he is gone a long journey : he hath taken a 
bag of money with him, and will come home at the day 
appointed. 

' ' With her much fair speech she caused him to yield, with 
the flattering of her lips she forced him. He goeth after her 
straightway, as an ox goeth to the slaughter, or as a fool to the 
correction of the stocks ; till a dart strike through his liver ; as 
a bird hasteth to the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his 
life. Hearken unto me now therefore, ye children, and 
attend to the words of my mouth. Let not thine heart decline 
to her ways, go not astray in her paths. For she hath cast 
down many wounded : yea, many strong men have been slain 
by her. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the cham- 
bers of death." 

Yet once again he speaks . We go on a little farther and 
find him repeating his warnings. The danger and the folly of 
it seem to come back to him over and over. " A foolish woman 
is clamorous : she is simple, and knoweth nothing. For she 
sitteth at the door of her house, on a seat in the high places 
of the city, to call passengers who go right on their ways : whoso 
is simple, let him turn in hither : and as for him that wanteth 
understanding, she saith to him, Stolen waters are sweet, and 
bread eaten in secret is pleasant. But he knoweth not that the 
dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell." 

It has been well said that this is, to-day, a good picture ot 
Broadway and the Bowery after nine o'clock at night. The 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 551 

whole picture, as he sketches it for us here and there, shows in 
every line the master hand that held the pencil. In the very 
first lines he puts in bold relief the libertine's loss of all worthy 
purpose, "Neither take they hold of the paths of life." What 
could be stronger or truer than these glimpses he gives us; — of 
the luxurious furnishings, — "I have decked my bed with cov- 
erings of tapestry, with carved works, with fine linen of Egypt, 
and I have perfumed my bed;" of the fugitive life, — "Lest 
thou shouldest ponder, her ways are moveable; " of the pecuni- 
ary loss, — "For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought 
to a piece of bread ; " of the slavery to appetite, — " He shall 
be holden with the chords of his sin; " of the folly of it, — "As 
an ox goeth to the slaughter, a fool to the correction of the 
stocks, a bird hasteth to the snare, whoso is simple let him turn 
in hither;" of the passions kindled, — "For jealousy is the 
rage of a man, therefore will he not spare in the day of ven- 
geance ; " of the intellectual, moral, and physical death, — " When 
thy flesh and thy body are consumed; her house inclineth unto 
death; a wound and dishonor shall he get; many strong men 
have been slain by her; her house is the way to hell, going 
down to the chambers of death; but he knoweth not that the 
dead are there; and that her guests are in the depths of hell. ' ' 

No cloistered fanatic, far secluded from that murky current of 
toil, sorrow and sin which marks the every-day life of the world, 
could have so written. These are words which could only come 
out of a thorough, practical acquaintance with the facts. 
Spoken by Inspiration, through an opulent king, the fame- of 
whose wisdom spread to the surrounding nations, generous and 
kind-hearted, yet giving full rein to his licentiousness in an age 
which offered him no curb ; spoken as the result of extended 
experiment ; spoken, if you please, inductively ; spoken, two 
thousand years ago, yet spoken as accurately as though walking 
the streets of the busy world of to-day, — if this voice have not. 
authority enough, and this testimony weight enough, and this ex- 



552 THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 

perience conclusiveness enough to keep us from this evil, then are 
we beyond instruction. Then will we not hear even the voice 
of the Apostle of Love when he says; — "But for the fearful, 
and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and fornica- 
tors, and idolators, and all liars, their part shall be in the lake 
that burneth with fire and brimstone ; which is the second 
death." 

II. Some good, substantial people act as if they felt — they 
really do feel — the crime against society and the family to be a 
myth, outside of the criminal courts. In the abstract they 
"suppose there are such things;" in the abstract they have 
heard of such things as houses of ill-fame ; but having been 
taught, and rightly too, to class this iniquity alongside of other 
crimes, they come unconsciously to think that its committal 
must be followed by headlines in the papers and procedures in 
the courts like those following the crimes of burglary, arson, 
and murder. Seeing less account of this crime than of the 
others named, it is easy to believe it no more common than 
they. It is easy to believe that the temptation to this, is no 
more direct and active than temptation to the others. And that 
therefore there is no more need of direct and specific warning. 
Who would think of warning his son of the wickedness and ruin 
of murder ? A thousand facts of life against which he runs 
every day, teach him this. Who would think of warning his 
son of the temptation to kill, telling him that he will surely meet 
it in its determined and persistent solicitation ? The parent 
knows perfectly well that if his son keeps away from liquor, in 
all probability he will never be in the least tempted to kill any 
man. To tell the son otherwise would be to tell him a false- 
hood. How is it about this crime which is born of lust? Is it 
prevalent % Is it rampant ? Is the young man almost sure to be 
directly assailed by it ? Must he meet it, nut on the unreal 
ground of ethics, but in the practical struggle of busy life upon 
the street ? How is it ? Let us see. 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 553 

Would you like to begin by learning how it is with the me- 
tropolis of the country ? Dr. F. R. Sturgis recently read a paper 
before the New York Academy of Medicine, on the "Regula- 
tion and Repression of Prostitution." His statements were, 
that his own observation and that of his professional brethren 
went to show that syphilis among the well-to-do classes was in- 
creasing every day. That with regard to the evil as it existed 
in New York City, he estimated, from the Parisian statistics, 
and those given by Sanger, that there were in New York to-day 
about 11,000 women who were either public prostitutes or clan- 
destine women. That it was estimated that the number of per- 
sons in the city treated annually for venereal diseases, in both 
private and public practice, was about 60,000. "One of the 
superintendents of police," says Dr. T. De Witt Talmage, "de- 
clared that there were enough houses of iniquity in New York 
to make a line three miles long, and that they would crowd 
Broadway from the Battery to Houston Street, in solid blocks, 
on each side; some of them having all the repulsions of Arch 
Block, and of the sailors' boarding-house, but some having all 
the glitter of the Fifth Avenue parlor. Upholstery outflaming 
the setting sun ; mirrors winged with cherubim ; fountains 
trickling mid-room into aquariums afloat with bright fins ; pic- 
tures that rival the Louvre and Luxembourg; carpets embracing 
the feet with their luxuriance ; Ghickering grand pouring out 
upon the night-air snatches of opera to charm passers-by. But 
the dead are there; and if the enchanter's wand could be only 
turned backward, or inverted, the upholstery would turn 
into a shroud, and the bright fountain into waters ropy and 
scummed, and the chandelier into the fretted roof of a sepulchre, 
and the song into a dirge, and the gay denizens of the place into 
the wan faces of the damned." The destruction of how many 
young men, and older men, think you, is portended by the ex- 
istence of this social maelstrom? Don't you think that the 
temptation must be terribly real, direct, and frequent ? 



554: THE VENEKEAL DISEASES. 

But suppose we turn our backs on the great city, and move 
westward into that wonderful Interior which is the garden of the 
world. The daily press is not generally esteemed as being over- 
sensitive on questions of morals. We find that the editor of a 
daily paper in one of the smaller cities of the Mississippi valley, 
has been visiting a neighboring town — a good representative 
town of perhaps 25,000 inhabitants. What has he to say of the 
experiences of this visit, in his own home paper ? This. 
" Early in the afternoon, sitting in the hall of a leading hotel, I 
was, by force of circumstances, compelled to be a listener to the 
conversation of three young men . They certainly did not ap- 
pear to be at all bashful or backward, nor did they so lower 
their voices that 1 had to strain my ears to hear them. They 
were dressed in the height of fashion, intelligent, good looking, 
and residents of the city. Their conversation ran on personal 
adventures with the abandoned women resident in the city, or 
travellers stopping at the hotels. They seemed to be acquainted 
with every resort in the city, and all the inmates. It was the 
vilest, the lowest, the most indecent symposium I ever attended. 
The blase coolness, the indifferent, matter-of-fact way in which 
these young men, whose ages were perhaps twenty-three, twenty 
and nineteen, held converse, was shocking to every manly sensi- 
bility. It exceeded in wretchedness the most depraved conver- 
sation of the lowest saloon loafers. Whether they were drinkers 
or no, I do not ask. 1 only ventured to inquire of a townsman 
their names ; he knew but one — the son of a leading citizen and 
business man ; the young man occupying a position of financial 
trust — his companions, doubtless, of equal social standing. This 
city has more evils than its notorious whisky shops. In no other 
city in the State, I trust, do young men sit in public and exchange 
tales of the vice- branded women with whom they associate." 

Yain trust. How far, in all towns large and small, sin has 
gotten hold of the young men, it is sorrowful to contemplate. 
A clergyman, who was formerly a hotel clerk in one of our larger 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 555 

cities, and who well understands both human nature and how to 
reach it, tells me that he is constantly surprised at the tales of 
sin which are told him by those resolved to lead a better life. 
It is notorious that such institutions as Wellesley College dare 
not publish the lists of their students lest they be assailed by 
evil solicitation. A thoroughly upright young man told me, a 
short time since, that, when living in a quiet county seat village, 
some acquaintances invited him to take a walk . He sallied out 
with them, to be unsuspectingly led to a rendezvous at the edge 
of town, when he was informed he could "have anything he 
wanted." In his own words, "he got out of there quick;" — 
but don't you think this touches the youth as a practical, aggres- 
sive temptation which must be squarely met? Says Dr. Tal- 
mage ; — "The first time I ever saw the city — it was the city of 
Philadelphia— I was a mere lad. I stopped at a hotel, and I 
remember in the even-tide one of these men plied me with his 
infernal art. He saw I was green. He wanted to show me the 
sights of the town . He painted the path of sin until it looked 
like emerald ; but I was afraid of him. I shoved back from the 
basilisk — I made up my mind he was a basilisk. I remember 
how he wheeled his chair round in front of me, and, with a con- 
centrated and diabolical effort, attempted to destroy my soul ; 
but there were good angels in the air that night." 

It is needless to linger longer among the festering sores of 
this iniquity, to be convinced of their fearful existence. And 
though the fact so transcends the common belief, we must not 
make the small-minded mistake of supposing the world to be grow- 
ing worse. Things have grown wonderfully better since the day 
when 3uch a man as Socrates could go, with his disciples, to 
visit a prostitute, for the purpose of consulting with her as to 
how her occupation might be made most profitable ! But when 
the police can raid a house of shame to find that four out of the 
five men arrested are members of the state legislature then in 
session, it would seem that at this present day there is still sufii- 



556 THE VENEBEAL DISEASES. 

cient cause for alarm, still a wonderful amount of wickedness 
for the world to cast behind it. 

III. Successful men of affairs in the world are those who 
grasp most completely the conditions under which human society 
exists, and are thus able to train their endeavors upon such 
lines of action as lead to honorable and successful careers. 
They are the men who estimate accurately the advantage of 
this, and the damage of that. They are the men who know 
values and appreciate forces. They are the men who see things 
as they are. Having learned something of the extent of this 
iniquity, can we doubt that such men see it, or be uncertain as 
to how they must regard it? Do we need to waste time making 
inquiry here? " Life would appear to be a very dangerous 
sea, judging by the number of wrecks that strew its shores — 
more remarkably unsafe, perhaps, for pleasure yachts and such 
other fancy craft as may fail to maintain the proper relations 
between canvas and ballast. * * We walk out into 
the world on some pleasant day, everything fair and fresh 
around us, and, with health in our blood and peace in our 
hearts, we think how good and beautiful a thing life is ; yet we 
rarely walk far without meeting some one to whom all its good- 
ness and beauty are lost. We meet some wretch whose hag- 
gard face and feeble limbs and fetid breath betray the victim 
of debauchery, dying by his last foul disease. * The 

universal fact, based on universal experience, is, that there is 
nothing in the world that makes so poor a return for its cost as 
sensual pleasure. No man ever traded extensively in this line 
without becoming a bankrupt in happiness. It does not pay, 
and cannot be made to pay, and every man would see and 
understand this if he would keep an account of his receipts and 
expenditures. * * Credit Sensual Pleasure with the 
illicit indulgence of a powerful passion. Then place the cost 
up on the debit side of the ledger : shame and fear, conscious loss 
of purity, the possession of a foul secret that is to be carried into 



THE VENEKEAL DISEASES. 55? 

all society, and into all relationships, disease and remorse, or, 
what is more than all these, hardness, brutality, and the forma- 
tion of habits whose only end is ruin. I may not, through fear 
of giving offense, enter into all the details of the debit side ot 
this account. They may be found and read of all men in grave- 
yards, in hospitals, in brothels, in garrets, and cellars, in ruined 
families, and ruined hearts and hopes . Now does this thing 
pay % * * Sensuality rises into the position of the 
grand scourge of mankind. It is the mother of disease, the 
nurse of crime, the burden of taxation, and the destroyer of 
souls." 

That is the way Dr. J. G. Holland saw it. This is the way 
an honored man in public station for many years in the metro- 
politan group of cities, sees it; — u If I could lift the curtain 
and reveal to the young the remorse and the shame and the 
slavery that are sure to come, it seems to me that they would 
cut off their right hand sooner than venture into the first viola- 
tion of chastity. To put back into that fair haven of purity is 
no holiday business after you have let the gales of passion 
loose." 

It is the business of newspaper correspondents to see. This 
is the way that giant among them, u Gath," sees this mon- 
strous vice. " Sensuality is hardly less the foe of man than 
alcohol. There may be extreme cases where alcohol is a relief 
to o'erdriven wits, compelling cessation, but the other fiend 
poisons the sources of moral distinctions, turns domestic trust 
into anarchy, makes murder no more than a scandal, and toward 
old age takes all the faith from life. Looking back the self- 
deluded man sees gulfs he cannot close, confidence he industri- 
ously disturbed, conjugality he has undermined, and heaven he 
has pulled down. For what but to take his soul and give it 
unto swine that turned again and rent him!" Even such a 
paper as the Chicago Times had some very feeling words to say 
about young men who paid with their hearts' blood for the 



558 THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 

indulgence of these nameless vices, when furnished with a text 
by the murder, at the hands of his mistress, of a clerk of the 
Board of Trade. Surely we do not need to push our question- 
ings further. 

IV. Would you know just what the physical penalties are? 
Should you enter the gates of Sodom, traverse her blistering 
streets, and pass into her putrefying lazarettos, you would find 
the most frequent and least dreaded disease to be what is known 
as gonorrhoea, or clap. One attack does not promise immunity 
from further trouble. It is no protection against another attack. 
And he who leads a life of flagrant sin is made the victim of 
this disease over and over again. It is, essentially, a violent 
inflammation of the mucous lining of the urethra, caused by 
the specific venereal poison, and accompanied by a purulent 
discharge from the inflamed surfaces. In from two to eight 
days after exposure to the virus, a slight itching and tingling 
about the forward part of the urethra is noticed, together with 
a reddening of its orifice. In a day or two, as the inflamma- 
tion grows, proceeding from before backwards, the orifice pre- 
sents a more angry appearance, is swollen, seems partly closed, 
becomes ragged in outline, and a watery or yellowish discharge 
oozes out from between its lips. Still the disturbance increases, 
until theglans becomes dark red, swollen, and tender; the pre- 
puce edematous and enlarged, producing phimosis or paraphimo- 
sis ; the discharge profuse, and of a greenish-yellow caste ; the 
desire to empty the bladder frequent ; the pain in so doing 
severe, and at times intolerable ; the stream itself small, twisted, 
and forked ; and oftentimes the whole penis becomes swollen, 
the whole organ being involved in a general inflammation — in 
rare instances going so far as to end in gangrene. Besides all 
this, the tumult almost always extends beyond the urethra and 
into the corpus spongiosum, producing frequent excitements of 
the whole apparatus, which, in its inflamed state, are exquisitely 
painful. This state of things has been termed chordee. There 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 559 

is also aching in the testes, groins and back, with more or less 
general fever. 

The disease runs its course in from one to three weeks, some 
cases being easily managed, while others are notably severe . 
After the inflammation has once reached its highest point, the 
decline is rapid ; but very commonly there remains, after all 
other symptoms of the trouble have disappeared, a slight dis- 
charge, perhaps only a drop or two daily, just enough to glue 
together the lips of the urethral orifice — a condition known as 
gleet. This is often very persistent, severely trying the patience 
of both the physician and his charge. Examination, however, 
will many times show it to be dependent upon irritation cre- 
ated by a stricture of the urethral canal ; this latter condition 
being consequent upon the violent inflammation which has 
burned over the delicate mucous surfaces. In such cases, the 
surgeon has ready means at hand for doing away with the ring 
of contracted tissue, and the gleet disappears with the removal 
of its cause. 

When an attack of gonorrhoea makes its appearance, it is much 
the better plan for the patient to remain quietly in his room, 
keeping faithfully to the recumbent position upon lounge or 
bed. But if, for some special reason, this be out of the ques- 
tion, a suspensory bandage should be worn so that the invaded 
tissues may have as large a measure of rest as may be. Frequent 
and prolonged bathing of the affected parts in hot water — as hot 
as can be borne — gives much relief, tends to lessen the severity 
of the attack as a whole, and diminishes the liability to chordee. 
When, however, this latter condition supervenes in spite of all 
mollifying measures, the great pain it causey demands prompt 
relief. This is best accomplished by the application, for a few 
moments, of a considerable degree of cold, through the medium 
of cold water, or some cold metallic body. Dr. Geo. W. Win- 
terburn has also found Lupulin of service. 

In the first stage of gonorrhoea the best remedy is Aconite. 



560 THE VENEKEAL DISEASES. 

It should be given in drop doses of the first decimal preparation, 
and repeated every hour or two. When the second stage is 
reached, i. e., when the smarting and burning begin, Cannabis 
Sativa should take the place of the Aconite. But to get the 
desired result from this remedy, it should be given in the 
thirtieth potency. Ignorance of the preparation in which its 
notable power over this inflammation lies, has resulted in disap- 
pointment in some quarters, with denial of its effectiveness. 
But properly used, it has no superior, and no peer even. Oil of 
Sandal- wood has often proved a valuable remedy in obstinate 
cases, given in doses of ten drops three times a day. Unfortu- 
nately it cannot be taken long without producing gastric disturb- 
ance, as shown by nausea, loss of appetite, etc. Still, it is a 
more reliable drug than either Copaiba or Cubeba, which were 
formerly such favorites. Among the drugs more commonly 
used, may also be mentioned, Gelsemium, Cantharis, Hydrastis, 
Hepar Sulphuris, Petroselinum, Thuya, and Sepia. 

Another method of handling the disease is the repression, or 
attempted repression, of the inflammation by means of astrin- 
gent and caustic solutions injected into the urethra. This 
method has been, and is, employed by very many physicians. 
Yet there are not wanting those who insist that the topical ap- 
plication of such drugs as Nitrate of Silver, Sulphate of Zinc, 
Acetate of Lead, etc., is not chiefly a means of cure, but a 
method of suppression which tends to drive the inflammation to 
the prostate gland, the bladder, or the testes, and is therefor 
to be discountenanced. This objection is well taken and valid, 
and it is to be hoped that these old time injections will soon take 
their place with the things of the past. But there are two local 
applications which are powerful for good, and at the same time 
free from possibilities of evil. The first was suggested by Dr. 
Price, of Baltimore, and consists in the injection, upon the first 
appearance of the discharge, of a few drops of pure Glycerine 
(the bladder having been first emptied), the same being retained 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 561 

about five minutes, and then allowed to escape. The second is 
applicable to all stages of the disease, and consists in the copious 
irrigation of the urethra, from behind forward, with hot water. 
It is a most safe and helpful measure, so moderating the painful 
features of the malady that they are reduced to the rank of mere 
annoyances, and materially shortening the duration of the 
attack. I believe Dr. H. H. Curtis was the first to publish 
tabulated results with this mode of treatment . He has used as 
much as ten quarts of hot water at a single sitting, with none 
but the happiest results. 

It must not be forgotten that severe complications are at times 
attendant upon an attack of gonorrhoea. The -most common of 
all is known as gonorrhceal ophthalmia. It is the most danger- 
ous of all known inflammations of the eye, and is due to the 
transplanting — accidentally, by means of the finger— of the 
highly contagious discharge from the urethra, to the conjunc- 
tiva. It rages with great violence, progressing from the mucous 
membrane lining the lids and covering the ball, to the cornea and 
the orbit, often destroying the sight with such rapidity that the 
eye is ruined before it is shown to the physician. Other com 
plications are rheumatism, and inflammations of the neck of the 
bladder, of the prostate gland, of the epididymis, and of the lym- 
phatic glands of the groin (bubo). Stricture rarely follows a 
gonorrhoea which has not been mistreated with strongly irritant 
injections. 

It should also be remembered that in rare instances the taking 
of a cold, over-exercise of the sexual apparatus — in short, any 
source of irritation, may bring on an attack of simple inflammation 
of the urethra, independent of the presence of the gonorrhceal 
virus . Nor is this simple inflammation readily distinguishable 
from the specific form ; and this possibility should be borne in 
mind, for ignorance of this fact has sometimes been the cause of 
much mental distress needlessly suffered. 

(36) 



562 THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 

Standing second in the list of the venereal diseases is chan 
croid. It is nothing more than a contagious sore or ulcer, 
which appears almost invariably about the glans or prepuce— 
in the great majority of cases just behind the corona glandis in 
that depression which marks the junction of the mucous mem- 
brane lining the prepuce with that covering the glans. This 
sore is of a strictly local character and does not in any way infect 
the system ; is soft, with a tendency to spread which sometimes 
results in considerable loss of tissue ; and is occasionally accom- 
panied by swelling of the lymphatics of the groin — a condition 
known as bubo. This is all there is of it. The pain, the an- 
noyance, the liability to any resultant damage, are all insignifi- 
cant. 

But it gathers importance from its resemblance to the first 
signal which that almost limitless disaster, syphilis, gives of its 
impending career of ruin. Literally, the word chancroid means, 
like chancre. And chancre is the name given to the local ulcer, 
closely resembling the ulcer of chancroid, which is the earliest 
and most trivial symptom of syphilis. Chancroid is no more 
than it appears to be; chancre is a prophecy of evil which 
clouds all the future. To determine to which variety a given 
sore belongs, requires all the technical knowledge and practical 
experience of the physician. The more prominent peculiarities 
by which chancroid is known, are its speedy appearance, this 
being within from one to three days after exposure ; the absence 
of induration or hardening of the contiguous tissue, from which 
it is familiarly known as u soft chancre;" the tendency of the 
ulceration to extend itself into the surrounding tissue ; and the 
abundant and acrid discharge from its surface. 

The treatment of chancroid is quite simple. The real thing 
to be accomplished is the destruction of the specific poison oi 
the ulcer, and its conversion into an innocent sore subject to the 
ordinary processes of healing. Surgeon Helmuth aptly says ; — 
41 We have not an ordinary ulcer; we have locally poisonous pus 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 563 

to encounter;" and lie follows the method of Eicord, making 
application of Sulphuric Acid mixed with sufficient powdered 
charcoal to form a half-solid paste. The more ordinary method 
is to dip the end of a glass rod in fuming nitric acid and apply 
to the ulcerated surface. In either case the application is con- 
tinued for but a few moments, and due care must be taken to 
avoid needless destruction of tissue. Subsequent care involves 
merely cleanliness and the use of any mild, unirritating dressing. 
For any accompanying bubo, the Protoiodide of Mercury, in the 
second or third decimal trituration, is undoubtedly the best 
remedy, and has over and over again proved its reliability and 
efficiency. Under its use, suppuration rarely takes place ; if 
this, however, occurs, the swelling must be opened and the pus 
allowed to escape. But we must leave this simple venereal 
ulcer, and hasten on to that dread malady which is, pre-emi- 
nently, the penalty of an impure life ; the physical death which 
lust, when it has conceived, bringeth forth. 

Possessed of a hideous prominence among the venereal dis- 
eases, of an inveteracy which clings to the system for decades, 
of a malignity which spares no organ and no tissue, syphilis 
stands the great scourge of Sodom, overshadowing all others — 
a leprosy before which all her other sores seem almost inoffensive. 
It is doubtless true that quite as many who live within her rotten 
walls die from the effects of gonorrhoea as from those of syphilis. 
For inflammatory conditions, long continued, travel backward 
to the kidneys and set up disorganizations which result in death. 
While much of the danger to life which formerly lay couched in 
syphilis, has succumbed to modern medicine. But an attack of 
gonorrhoea soon runs its course, and the system is freed from its 
poison ; as is conclusively shown by the ready susceptibility to 
another onset of the disease. Not so with syphilis. Once con- 
tracted, it is doubtful if it ever leaves the system ; certain it is 
that a second attack is a thing of the utmost rarity. Pursuing 
its victim through long years with successive organic affections 



564 THE VEXEREAL DISEASES. 

in wonderful variety, the exact danger, damage, and disfigure 
ment of which cannot be predicted, it possesses terrors before 
which those of gonorrhoea sink into comparative insignificance. 
The only fear which chancroid carries with it, is that it may be 
syphilis ; so that syphilis is left the one characteristic constitu- 
tional rottenness with which Sodom permanently brands her 
denizens. 

Just when this most frightful of poisons made its appearance 
in the world, has been the subject of much and animated discus- 
sion. There can be no question that, there was a special and 
violent outbreak of the disease about four hundred years ago. 
At the close of the fifteenth century, the king of France set out 
for Italy with a large army, to take possession of Naples. In 
the clash of armies which followed, and with the debauchery 
which flourishes in the wake of large bodies of soldiery, and 
simultaneously with the disbanding of the troops, there was a 
terrible outburst of syphilis. Willing to take the odium from 
off their own shoulders and place it upon those of their enemies, 
the Italians called it the " French disease," while the French 
named it the "mal de Naples." So notable were the ravages 
of the disease at this period, that it has been quite generally 
supposed that its very existence dated from this epoch in its his- 
tory. Granting this to be the fact, it would still be a mistake 
to put the entire responsibility for its birth upon the shoulders 
of the Neapolitan armies. For before the French had left the 
soil of Italy, it had obtained such foothold in Germany as to 
attract public notice. Indeed, the origin of this celebrated out- 
break of venereal disease has been ascribed to an altogether 
different source. Surgeon Helmuth, speaking of the scholarly 
researches of Jourdan in the matter of the history of syphilis, 
says; — u He is also of opinion that the terrible epidemic 
which prevailed about the close of the fifteenth century, origi- 
nated with the Marranes (hogs). This term was applied to 
those Moors and Jews who had entirely disregarded the teach- 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 565 

ings of Christianity, and refused to enlist under its banner; 
for this offense they were expelled from Spain by an edict of 
King Ferdinand, dated March, 1492. The persecutions were 
unremitting, and the tortures to which this unfortunate class 
were subjected were horrible in the extreme, to avoid which 
they concealed their belief, but secretly practiced those rules 
that were prescribed by their religion. They are described as 
living in the most disgusting and loathsome manner, and leprosy 
among them was alleged to be common. They were driven 
from their homes, not allowed to carry with them any of their 
property, and very many of them retired to the northern coasts 
of Africa, where they propagated a disease so terribly contagious, 
that of 170,000 families who crossed to Africa, 30,000 were de- 
stroyed. Jourdan says : ' When we compare the testimonies 
of the most veridical historians and physicians, we think it im- 
possible to doubt its being derived from the Marranes, who 
were expelled from Spain before the discovery of America.' " 

Turning from the hypothesis which refers the origin of syphi- 
lis to the close of the fifteenth century, we come upon the 
theory, which has been quite a popular one, that its original 
home was with the aborigines of this country, from whence it 
was carried to Europe by the sailors who were with Columbus, 
upon their return with him from his first voyage of discovery 
to the western world. That it existed in the early Spanish 
settlements is true. In his life of Columbus, Irving says; — 
"Many of the Spaniards suffered also under the torments of a 
disease hitherto unknown among them, the scourge, as was 
supposed, of their licentious intercourse with the Indian 
females; but the origin of which, whether American or Euro- 
pean, has been a subject of great dispute." It is reasonable 
to suppose that the disease seemed to them a "hitherto 
unknown" one, because appearing with an unaccustomed viru- 
lence. For it has long been known that syphilis is most violent 
in its manifestations when it crosses the race line. At any rate, 



566 THE VENEEEAL DISEASES. 

the theory of the infection of Europe through disease carried 
there on board the ships of Columbus, is clearly untenable. 

Not, however, because syphilis did not exist among the 
aboriginal peoples of this continent. It is highly probable 
that the disease is as old as the iniquity of which it is the fruit . 
Professor Joseph Jones has called attention to the fact that the 
skeletons found in the prehistoric graves scattered over the 
southern part of this country, show in their very bones unmis- 
takable marks of its ravages. u So far from these evidences of 
the action of syphilis being mere ' traces of periostitis, and con- 
stituting mere roughness or hyperostoses along the tibial shafts,' 
the bones are in many instances thoroughly diseased, enlarged, 
and thickened, with the medullary cavity completely obliterated 
by the effects of inflammatory action, and with the surfaces 
eroded in many places. These erosions resemble in all respects 
those caused by syphilis and attended by ulceration of the skin 
and soft parts during life. Furthermore, the disease was not 
confined to the 'tibial shafts;' bones of the cranium, the 
fibula, the ulna, the radius, the clavicle, the sternum, and the 
bones of the face exhibited unmistakable traces of periostitis, 
ostitis, caries, sclerosis, and exostosis. 

"That these diseases were not due to mechanical injury or to 
exposure to cold, is evident from the fact that they were almost 
universally symmetrical. Thus, when one tibia was diseased, 
the other was similarly affected, both as to the position and 
nature of the disease. In like manner both fibulae presented 
similar evidences of periostitis, ostitis, and exostosis ; this was 
true also of the bones of the forearm (radius and ulna) and of 
the clavicle."* 

Skulls bearing the same marks of reproach have been found 
in Egyptian mummies, in the lake dwellings of Europe, and 
among the antiquities of Peru. Captain Dabry, a French con- 
sul in China, asserted that ' ' Chinese medical literature affords 

*The Venereal Diseases. Bumstead and Taylor. 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 567 

evidence of the existence of syphilis in that country and of its 
treatment by Mercury, many centuries before the birth of Christ. " 
A current medical journal gives the following account of the 
existence of the disease at an early day in Japan, gleaning the 
same from the British Medical Journal, and Yirchows Archiv. 
It seems that between the years A. D. 806 and 810, an emperor 
of Japan commanded his court physicians, Abemanus and 
Idzumo Kirosada, to collect in one volume all extant records of 
native medicine and surgery. A manuscript copy of this work, 
for centuries forgotten, although the facts of its origin were 
recorded in Japanese history, was found in 1827, by a priest, 
in a provincial Buddhist temple. Dr. Scheube, of Leipzig, has 
recently examined this work, and, in a published article has 
shown its undoubted authenticity and its high value from a 
scientific point of view. It was written long before Chinese 
ideas had penetrated into Japan and influenced native practi- 
tioners. The most interesting passages are descriptions of 
local and general affections, which clearly prove that syphilis, 
and several allied disorders, were well known to the ancient 
Japanese. Chancroid and phagedenic chancre are clearly 
described, as well as a " swelling on the penis, the size of a 
millet seed," followed by eruptions, feverishness, pains in the 
bones and head, blindness, swelling of the testicles, and other 
very familiar symptoms. These were observed to continue for 
many years. 

Of the three hypotheses as to the beginnings of this scourge — 
that it gained its foothold in Europe as an importation from 
America ; that it had its birth on European soil about the close 
of the fifteenth century ; that it has existed from remote 
antiquity — it hardly admits of a doubt that the latter will 
become the generally accepted opinion. As Gross* well puts 
it; — "Irnay remark that, in my opinion, it is great folly to 
regard the disease as of modern origin. If the records of 

*A System of Surgery. 



568 THE VEXEREAL DISEASES. 

antiquity could be fully explored, it cannot be doubted that we 
should discover the most satisfactory and irrefragable evidence 
of the existence of syphilis in the most remote periods of 
society, now aggravated and now kept in abeyance, according 
to the habits and morals of the various races of mankind, and 
the nature of the climate of the countries in which they dwelt." 

Leaving the history of this disorder, and turning our atten- 
tion to the disease itself, we find it to be a certain invisible, 
impalpable poison, which first manifests its presence by the 
appearance of the characteristic sore at the spot where it entered 
the organism. But that sore is not the disease, it is but the 
first signal of its attack. The poison itself, the disease itself, 
that destructive force which spends its direful energies upon the 
system for long continued years, is a thing so subtle that no 
chemist has yet detected it, no microscope has yet found it. To 
understand at all the syphilitic disorder as it passes from stage 
to stage and from tissue to tissue, one must have a clear con- 
ception of the undiscovered but active poison which pervades 
the entire system, of which all those changes we meet in func- 
tion and in organ, are but the manifestation and result. 

The primary sore is insignificant, save as a sure prophecy of 
evil in the future. It has received the name of chancre, and 
appears in about three weeks after the poison has entered the 
system. It may show itself a little earlier or considerably 
later, but the average interval is from twenty-one to twenty- 
four days. How useless is the attempt to destroy the poison by 
cauterizing the sore, is apparent upon the mere statement of this 
long period of incubation. The chief characteristic of a chan- 
cre is its indurated base, dependent upon an infiltration of the 
subjacent tissues. It may feel under the finger like a split pea, 
or present a hardness several times greater in extent. While 
in other cases it is so slight as to have been compared to parch- 
ment, requiring a skilful touch for its detection. The chancre 
may disappear in two or three weeks, its duration being gener- 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 569 

ally somewhat longer, at times persisting for months. Its treat- 
ment is simple. It involves scrupulous cleanliness, and the 
application of a lint dressing moistened with Calendula, or 
sprinkled with Iodoform. 

Syphilitic bubo, an indolent enlargement of the lymphatic 
glands situated in the groin, is noticed about two weeks after 
the appearance of the chancre. These swellings are hard, 
indurated, do not suppurate, soon reach their maximum size, 
and then remain stationary for long periods of time . They 
require no treatment beyond that instituted for the general 
syphilitic taint. 

These two conditions noted as being the first to supervene 
upon the reception of the poison, chancre and bubo, constitute 
the first stage of the disease, technically known as primary 
syphilis. It will be noticed that they are not general, but local 
derangements . They are but the little cloud, no larger than a 
man's hand, which presages the coming tempest. And as there 
is often a lull before the storm bursts, so there are generally 
intervals of greater or less length — sometimes of years — 
between the three stages of this malady, which are known as 
primary, secondary and tertiary syphilis. 

Six or seven weeks after the appearance of the chancre, pro- 
vided remedial treatment has not materially affected the course 
of the disorder, the manifestations of secondary syphilis begin 
to show themselves. They consist principally of a great variety 
of affections of the skin and mucous membranes; including 
also some lesser affections of the eye, of the nervous system, 
and of various glands. Just before the eruption begins to dis- 
figure the skin, symptoms of fever set in, well marked in some 
cases, less so in others. But slight or severe, the accompany- 
ing pains are sure to develop with all their characteristic "bone- 
breaking" qualities. They may be felt only at night, are sure 
to be worse at that time even if they continue through the day, 
and may occur in almost all parts of the body, though that 



570 THE VENEKEAL DISEASES. 

seated between the knee and ankle is popularly supposed to 
be most suggestive of the specific poison. The cutaneous 
eruption may assume the form of almost any class of skin dis- 
eases, i. e., it may be vesicular, pustular, papular, tubercular, 
etc. Their most distinctive features are their color, — that of 
copper, or raw ham— and the absence of itching. The hair 
loses its tone, becomes harsh and dry, and suffers marked thin- 
ning, not only upon the scalp, the beard and eyebrows sharing 
in the spoliation. With the mucous membranes, the unwel- 
come presence is mainly shown through the medium of ulcers, 
and their near relatives, the peculiar, moist, furred, " mucous 
patches." Although frequently found elsewhere, these lesions 
appear, by preference, in and about the cavities of the mouth 
and nose. 

It is not practicable to draw an exact line between secondary 
and tertiary syphilis. For instance, inflammation of the iris is 
an intermediate affection occurring between these two stages ; 
while the periosteum and bones suffer in both. However, ter- 
tiary syphilis may set in at any time after two years have 
elapsed from the appearance of the chancre, and is marked by 
its wonderfully destructive tendencies, and its attacks upon the 
deeper tissues, such as bone, tendon, cartilage, the viscera, con- 
nective tissue, etc. u Its presiding genius is destruction, the ten- 
dency of its lesions is to softening and ulceration, and the 
medium through which these changes are effected is a substance 
known as gummy material, either diffused through the tissues, 
or collected into circumscribed tumors . This gummy material 
is a specific neoplasm analogous to tubercle, cancer, lupous 
deposit, etc. It is an hyperplasia of cells, which have not gen- 
erally the vitality to become organized. They grow at the 
expense of the tissue in which they are formed, and, after reach- 
ing a certain stage of development, undergo a retrograde meta 
morphosis, and either become absorbed gradually, without solu- 
tion of continuity of the tissue in which they are deposited, or 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 571 

break down in mass, occasioning abcess or ulceration — in either 
case leaving indelible cicatrices behind . Certain of the new form- 
ations due to tertiary syphilis become organized, leading to per- 
manent thickening, subperiosteal exostoses, pachymeningitis, 
chronic laryngeal thickenings, etc."* 

Time and space would fail us were the attempt made to fol- 
low out in detail the multiform disaster which this hydra-headed 
monster inflicts upon the body. Kings have died in consequence 
of it. No out-of-the-way corner of the organism is secluded 
enough to escape its ravages. No tissue and no function is 
secure from its menace. The muscles suffer destruction ; the 
bones decay, or are deformed by excrescences ; the skin is made 
repulsive by a numerous group of disorders ; the mucous mem- 
branes are perforated with ulcerations ; the tongue is eaten 
away by the same process ; the tissues of the larynx are broken 
down; the exquisite mechanism of the eye is- attacked in its 
various parts by destructive inflammations; the inner chamber 
of the ear is assailed, while the cartilage which gives form to the 
outer ear is consumed by the common corrosion; tumors and 
chronic inflammations beset the lungs; the nervous system suf- 
fers in its very substance; the abdominal viscera are i visited in 
their turn ; while deep ulcers hold high carnival anywhere and 
everywhere, and the very nails rot off. 

Hellish picture as it is, it is fact and not fancy. Take the nerv- 
ous system. I know of no man who has a better right to speak 
here, than Dr. H. C. Wood, Professor of nervous diseases in 
one of the most famous medical schools in this country. "What 
does he say ? "It is now necessary to approach a subject whose 
importance forbids silence, but whose nature is such as almost 
to forbid utterance in a popular work like the present. Yet 
how is the lesson to be learned, if no one teaches it? It is 
scarcely necessary or right here to say much about the dangers 
of a sexually impure life. Only this should be remembered, 

*Genito-Urinary Diseases. Van Buren and Keyes. 



572 THE VLNEREAL DISEASES. 

that across the life of the man who yields once to temptation, 
lies the shadow of a possible fate to himself, and, if he marries, 
to those most dear to him, amongst the most horrible on earth; 
that no precaution, that no supposed character on the part of 
his partner in guilt, is any guarantee of escape from a disease 
which, once induced, is ineradicable from the system. Also, 
that apparent escape from evil consequences is by no means 
always a real escape. 

U A large proportion of severe brain affections are the result 
of contracted disease ; and it has been my fate to see many per- 
sons who were astounded when told the true nature of their 
disorder — they having never suspected that they had suffered, 
although they freely confessed to having, in their youth, exposed 
themselves to the contagion. They thought they had escaped, 
but the early sowing yielded in after years its harvest of suffer- 
ing and death."* 

Let me show you the picture as physicians draw it for the 
eye of physicians. This is the picture of one phase of the dis- 
ease, as drawn by Drs. Yan Buren and Keyes in their classical 
work : "It may develop as a gummy nodule or as diffuse infil- 
tration of the sub-mucous tissue, or be primarily subperiosteal 
on the wall of the pharynx, or in the nasal cavity, or on the hard 
palate. It develops first as one or more deep, round, hard, 
insensitive swellings, possibly a diffuse infiltration. The mucous 
membrane may be unchanged in color at first or slightly yel- 
lowish, if the tumors are superficial. As the latter grow, the 
membrane over them darkens in color, becomes edematous, 
then softens and rapidly gives way, leaving a deep, irregular 
yellow ulcer, with distinct loss of substance, surrounded by a 
line of inflammatory redness. Such ulcers often spread with 
alarming rapidity, perforating the soft palate or cutting off the 
uvula within a few days, even hours. The explosion may take 
place as if by electricity, and twenty-four hours deprive a patient 

*Brain-work and Overwork. 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 573 

of his soft palate. Deglutition is sometimes painful, sometimes 
painless, according to whether or not the ulcer is put upon the 
stretch in swallowing. Any subjacent bone becomes rapidly 
eroded and necrosed, so that the progress of the ulcer may de- 
stroy all the soft and portions of the hard palate, more or less of 
the turbinated and ethmoid bones, with the vomer and portions 
of the posterior bony wall of the pharynx, leaving a vast ulcer- 
ated cavity to represent what was the fauces and pharynx. The 
disease may extend inward occasionally and affect the mem- 
branes at the base of the brain, giving rise to epilepsy or other 
nervous phenomena. The voice becomes nasal, and food and 
drink pass forward and out of the nose in swallowing." 

Here is an allied sketch from Helmuth's System of Surgery: 
"In the more advanced stages the ulcer is excavated, or, as Mr. 
Hunter has expressed it, 'dug out;' if the ulceration still ad- 
vance, one or both tonsils, the velum palati, membranous por- 
tion of the Eustachian tube, and even the epiglottis may be 
entirely destroyed, giving rise to permanent deafness, incessant 
cough, and endangering the patient's life from suffocation, by 
permitting food and drink to enter the larynx. In many in- 
stances, a communication is established between the nose and 
mouth, from the ulceration having destroyed the soft parts 
and bones of the palate. At other times the disease travels 
along the Schneiderian membrane, undermines the septum and 
cartilaginous portion of the nose, destroys the periosteum cover- 
ing the thin and delicate bones, which are soon rendered com- 
pletely carious, and crumble away, destroying the nose, and 
thereby causing pitiable disfiguration, and reducing the patient 
to a condition often loathsome, with foul and fetid matter flow- 
ing perpetually from the nostrils or into the throat, and a breath 
so extremely offensive as to render the sufferer hateful to him- 
self and disgusting to others, — Ozcena syphilitica." 

These being the pictures which authorities draw for the in- 
struction of their brother physicians, certainly these pages must 



574 THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 

be judged innocent of any exaggeration. Where the fact is so 
terrific, there is small temptation to go beyond the fact. The 
leprosy of Sodom is frightful enough in its reality to beggar 
fancy. "There is no organ or tissue of the body," say Drs. 
Yan Buren and Keyes, ' *' through which it may not manifest its 
presence by symptoms, or upon which it may not exercise its 
power. The lymphatic glands all over the body may suffer, 
some habitually more than others. The skin from crown to 
sole, the nails, the hair (the teeth in inherited disease), and the 
mucous membranes, especially around the natural orifices, have 
their peculiar affections, due to syphilis. The eye and the 
testicle do not escape, and each and every viscus is liable to be 
invaded, as are all the tissues, connective, fibrous, muscular, 
cartilage, bone, brain, nerve, and vessel. Not only this, but 
the all-embracing arms of general syphilis include the functions 
as well, any of which may be disordered by it and each and all 
of the special senses may be perverted or destroyed — including 
the sexual appetite. The symptoms of all the forms of local, 
special, or general paralysis of motion or sensation, may be occa- 
sioned by syphilis. Finally, the intellect may succumb. Acute 
and chronic mania, dementia, lunacy, idiocy, all the above, and 
many more, form a category of symptoms comprehended under 
the one term general syphilis." 

Is syphilis ever cured ? Is it ever expelled from the body, so 
that the system is thoroughly freed from its influence ? Does 
the time ever come when one who has contracted this disease 
may marry with the assurance that he will not be compelled to 
read the story of his sin in the puny faces of his unfortunate 
children'* These are hard questions. One shrinks from so 
answering that hope shall not find one little corner in which to 
stay. Yet the malady is so inveterate that no one can say when 
it is at an end . No one can affirm, positively, that it is never 
cured ; no one can say certainly that it ever does more than relax 
its hold on its victim. Books have been written on these ques- 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 575 

tions, and they are still open. Physicians of eminence do not 
hesitate to say, No, it is never cured. Other physicians of equal 
worth incline to the opposite opinion. The strong hereditary 
taint which syphilis carries into the succeeding generation may 
well make us cautious. The poison may be communicated to 
the unborn child long after the danger of inflicting it upon that 
child's mother, is past. Its effects are manifested in various 
ways. The life of the child is often destroyed before its birth. 
At other times the child is born with external eruptions, and 
affections of sundry internal organs. Its favorite method is to 
leave the child apparently untouched until after birth; when, 
for some apparently unaccountable reason, it fails to grow, its 
skin ' ' breaks out, ' ' and the nose fills up with mucous. The 
child's face has a strangely aged look, the skin being withered, 
sallow and wrinkled ; while, later, the teeth present a notched, 
stunted, irregular, half-developed appearance. Oftentimes the 
characteristic ulcerative processes develop themselves, the va- 
rious junctions between the skin and mucous membranes being 
favorite localities. 

Sometimes the curse of inherited syphilis remains in hiding 
until childhood passes into youth, or youth verges upon man- 
hood. "Cases are not very infrequently encountered where a 
growing or full-grown child first presents evidences of syphilis, 
the disease being unmistakably inherited, perhaps the father 
known to be syphilitic, yet neither the child nor the mother can 
be brought to confess directly or indirectly any antecedent 
syphilitic disease. That there may have been some undiscov- 
ered symptom in babyhood must be allowed, but still it is as 
near a certainty as possible, without absolute proof, that a 
child of a parent whose syphilis has nearly run out, may show 
no signs of disease until many years after birth, and then the 
lesion will be of a bone, a joint, a gland, the eye, or perhaps 
there will be a patch on the mucous membrane of the buccal 
cavity, an ulcer of the nose resembling lupus, or some 



576 THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 

other single localized lesion, usually passing undiagnosti 
cated as far as its etiology is concerned. These symptoms were 
often designated by the older surgeons by the somewhat vague 
term of ' strumous,' as evincing characteristics which were not 
absolutely identical with those of scrofula. The popularity of 
Astley Cooper's well-known tonic for struma, in early childhood 
(corrosive sublimate in Huxham's tincture of bark), is probably 
explained in this manner." 

In any event, it matters little whether the presence of inher- 
ited syphilis be determined earlier or later, for that fine integ- 
rity of constitution which carries a man in safety through strains 
and crises to a useful and successful life, is lost in either case ; 
to be supplanted by that puny and unreliable habit of body 
which is ever ready to fall in pieces upon the slightest provoca- 
tion. Taking cinto account, then, both the direct damage to the 
individual, and the shattered constitution entailed upon the 
child, the possible and probable length of time for which the sys- 
tem may suffer from the baleful influence of this grim tenant 
becomes a momentous question. It is a question upon which 
there is wide disagreement even among experts. This very dis- 
agreement is conclusive evidence that the poison may reside 
within the organism for extended periods, even though it be not 
constantly at work in campaigns of active destruction. 

Perhaps we cannot arrive more nearly at the truth of the 
matter than by listening to the opinions of those who can speak 
with most authority. Drs. Yan Buren and Keyes say, on this 
point ; — "There is no disease so protean in its form as syphilis. 

'Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.' 

Syphilis finds expression through every tissue. Its symptoms 
simulate those of a vast number of other diseases, and some of 
its forms may be so obscure as to baffle accurate diagnosis with- 
out the assistance of the touchstone treatment. So true is this, 
that it has passed into a proverb among certain of the less 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 577 

well-informed of the profession, in face of an obscure disease, 'If 
you do not know what to do, treat the patent for syphilis. ' The 
unscientific looseness of such a course needs no comment; but 
the existence of the proverb is the best argument to substantiate 
the protean type of syphilis. Only minute and careful investi- 
gation into the more obscure manifestations of the disease can 
lead to accuracy of diagnosis, which is of more importance in 
this than perhaps in any other malady. Hence the difficulty of 
saying when syphilis has ended, or indeed of deciding that it 
ever does end, since it so often permanently modifies the dia- 
thesis of the individual who has suffered from it. Syphilis may 
occur in so mild a form that the patient may never know he has 
it ; or, again, with such intensity that extensive lesions of the 
skin, bone, and other tissues, may come on within the first year, 
with paralytic symptoms of great extent and severity. Syphilis 
may manifest itself as a mild eruption after chancre, disappear- 
ing possibly without treatment, and then (exceptionally, it is 
true) lie latent for many years, as long as fifty-two years, to 
reappear with characters due only to syphilitic disease. In 
Fournier's case, a gentleman of seventeen had acquired chancre, 
followed by some secondary eruptions, which were pronounced 
syphilitic. No further symptoms had appeared until the age of 
sixty-nine — fifty-two years after the chancre — when he had suf- 
fered from syphilitic caries of the upper jaw. At seventy-two 
he applied to Fournier for a gummy tumor of the thigh, which 
got rapidly well under the Iodide of Potassium. Now, in this 
case, had the patient died at the age of sixty-eight, he might, 
with seeming justice, have been reported as an instance of cure, 
for over half a century would have intervened since his last 
syphilitic symptom. 

"This one case gives at a glance the practical answer to the 
whole question of the duration of syphilis. Every physician of 
any considerable experience with syphilis can recall analogous 
cases, though, perhaps, less striking. Syphilis, once acquired, 

(37) 



578 THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 

stamps its impress upon the individuality of the patient, and 
becomes a part of him, and no power on earth in a given case 
can say when that impress disappears. A half-century may 
pass away and the trail of the serpent be still visible. This is a 
fact, and as such must be recognized. It is of vast practical im- 
portance, and to shut our eyes to it would be folly. That we do 
not so shut our eyes, even those of us who believe in an early 
and radical cure of syphilis, is sufficiently shown by the avidity 
with which, in doubtful cases of skin or bone disease, the history 
of the patient is carefully inquired into for a record of pre-exist- 
ing syphilis, which, if found, no matter how distant, makes the 
diagnosis, establishes the treatment, and often leads to a cure. * 

' ' Practically what the physician wants to know is this : during 
what time are symptoms liable to recur before that long latent 
period may be expected, which is to terminate all manifestations 
of disease, and in which the patient is certainly well, probably 
cured ? Or, still more practically, the question may be put : If 
a patient presents himself with syphilitic chancre, at what period 
may he safely marry ? 

"Roughly, and on the average, this last question may be 
answered by saying, after about two and a half years, or to be 
safe regarding marriage, one year after the disappearance of the 
last syphilitic symptom, treatment having been continuously 
kept up, and being continued until after the birth of the first 
child. This may be said, because well-managed syphilis usually 
ceases to relapse in about that time. Those patients most often 
do badly, other things being equal, who follow irregular and 
uneven courses of treatment, now pushing medication to excess, 
in the hope of killing the disease, which is impossible, now giv- 
ing up all treatment in despair. It is very rare for bad symp- 
toms to appear upon a patient who falls into the hands of a con- 
scientious physician, one who recognizes that the disease cannot 
be jugulated, that the eliminative and not the abortive treatment 
must be followed, and who quietly and steadily pursues the 



THE VENEKEAL DISEASES. 579 

enemy through its periods of repose, as well as during its mo- 
ments of eruption, confident that, by mildly and persistently 
keeping up this treatment by extinction, he will triumph at last 
over the disease. In mild cases so treated there may be but 
one faint eruption, or perhaps but a few little spots, with epi- 
trochlear, glandular induration and a few mucous patches, to 
mark the disease, the whole of the symptoms only lasting a few 
months after chancre, and the patient's after-life being health- 
ful. This, however, is the exception. Ordinarily some mild 
symptoms continue to crop out from time to time, for perhaps 
on an average two to three years, after which comes the period, 
be it care or not, during which the patient bears all the marks 
of health, is unable to communicate the disease, and reproduces 
healthy offspring. 

"Finally, there are exceptional examples where late tertiary 
symptoms appear after long years of latency, as already 
observed; of malignant syphilis which is controlled with diffi- 
culty by treatment ; and, of other inveterate specimens of dis- 
ease where relapse after relapse follows through long series of 
years, perhaps in spite of a continuous intelligent treatment. ? ' 

Dr. B . W. Kichardson, in his well-known work, Diseases of 
Modern Life, says; — "One disease stands apart for notice. 
The communicable malady called ' specific,' or syphilis, the 
moral as well as the physical blot on our civilized life, I must 
mention forcibly, however unpleasant and brief the utterance. 
The poison of this malady once engrafted into the living body, 
and producing its effects there, leaves, according to my experi- 
ence, organic evils which are never in the whole of a lifetime 
completely removed. Of the many examples of this form of 
disease which in thirty years of medical life 1 have seen, I can 
recall not one in which some permanent evils have not been 
inflicted. In many instances the evils have passed in hereditary 
line; in all they have remained in the organism first affected, 
tinging to the end of its life, every other disorder, and produ- 



580 THE VENEEEAL DISEASES. 

cing themselves some disorders which surreptitiously assume 
independent characters, and are looked upon too often as dis- 
tinct and independent constitutional or local affections. Vari- 
ous forms of disease of the skin ; the disease known as lupus ; 
some forms of consumption ; some phases of struma or scrofula ; 
many forms of cachectic feebleness and impaired physical 
build, — what are denominated delicate states of constitution, — 
these and other types of disease are so directly and indirectly 
connected with the specific taint, it becomes impossible to be 
too careful in tracing it out, or in measuring the degree to which 
it extends in the field of morbid phenomena. In a word, this 
communicable disease, though the most controllable, is proba- 
bly, taking it all in all, the most prolific of injury to human 
kind. In the happier days to come, when, under moral influ- 
ences, this malady shall cease, the nosologies of the learned 
will have to be revised, that they may be curtailed of loath- 
some phenomena now too truly registered, but then, except by 
the past, unknown." 

The treatment of syphilis is well defined, and requires the 
use of but few drugs. A great number have been, first and last, 
extravagantly praised for their supposed virtues ; but one by one 
they have failed to stand the test of experience. The two rem- 
edies which do almost all the work which is ever done toward 
curing this disease, are Mercury and Iodine. The latter is 
almost exclusively used in the form of the Iodide of Potassium ; 
though the Iodides of Sodium and Ammonium are also used, 
and, in rare instances, the Iodine itself independently of any 
combination. Mercury, too, is used in various preparations, the 
Protoiodide being that form possessing the largest usefulness. 
But whether used in this form or that, both drugs are thoroughly 
reliable and absolutely indispensable. Prejudice has arisen in 
some quarters against the use of Mercury; but the prejudice 
grew out of the production of that unfortunate condition 
whose chief symptom is salivation, and such use of Mercury is 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 581 

not use, but abuse. Intelligently given, no harm of any sort 
results from its persistent use ; and the experience of every 
successful physician is the same as that of Professor Newman, 
of Yienna. After systematic experiment with a series of cases 
treated according to the two methods, the mercurial and the 
non-mercurial, he gives it as his opinion that the treatment 
without Mercury may be well enough in theory, but is unsuc- 
cessful in practice. It is stated that the laborers in the quick- 
silver mines never suffer from venereal disease, though not, by 
any means, always living exemplary lives. 

Mercury is the remedy for the primary and secondary stages. 
It has been given in numerous preparations and in various ways. 
In all ordinary cases the Protoiodide of Mercury is the most 
desirable preparation, and through the stomach the most eligi 
ble mode of administration. I know of no form of the drug 
so useful and energetic as the triturations of the pharmacies. 
"The first week two grains of the first decimal trituration is given 
daily ; this preparation is then changed for the second or third 
trituration, which is continued indefinitely. Dr. Lewin has 
warmly urged the merits of the subcutaneous injection of Mer- 
cury. For this mode of administration the Bichloride is used, in 
doses of from one-tenth to three-eights of a grain. In those 
instances where, for some unexplainable reason, ordinary meth- 
ods are not followed by the desired results, this procedure of 
Dr. Lewin' s proves very satisfactory. 

In the later syphilitic disorders — tertiary syphilis— the Iodide 
of Potassium occupies much the same place that Mercury does 
in the earlier stages. Its effect upon the ulcerations, and in promo- 
ting the absorption of the nodules and tumors, and of the gummy 
deposit everywhere, is certain and gratifying. It is given in 
doses of from one to five grains three times a day, dissolved in 
a liberal allowance of water. At times, when neither Mercury 
nor the Iodides seem exactly to meet the wants of the case, the 
desired results may be obtained by alternating the remedies. 



582 THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 

This is known as the " mixed treatment ; " and is recognized as- 
bridging over, in many cases, what would otherwise be a very 
unfortunate break in the treatment and, consequently, in the 
progress of the patient toward the posession of a sounder body. 
It is rarely that a physician finds it necessary to have recourse 
to other forms of Iodine — the pure drug uncombined, and the 
Iodides of Sodium and Ammonium. 

Among the drugs of secondary importance in the treatment 
of this disease, are found Nitric Acid, Phytolacca, Sarsaparilla, 
Stillingia, Arsenic, Aurum, Sulpher, etc. But when the two 
giant remedies, in intelligent hands, fail to do their work, before 
recourse is had to the lesser medicines there should be careful 
inquiry into the hygienic conditions. For the probabilities are- 
that the causes of failure lie in this direction rather than with 
the remedial agents. It must be insisted upon that the patient 
be healthily housed, that he have an ample supply of fresh air,, 
that his food be wholesome, his evacuations regular and satis- 
factory, that he pay due attention to physical culture and the 
bath, and, in short, so comport himself in all things as to invite- 
the best of health. 

But we have lingered in the lazar-house of Sodom long 
enough. Shall we not up and away ? We can gain nothing by 
a farther stay. What can we learn from this abode of leprosy r 
save that sin and death go hand in hand? I am sure we may 
do much better than allow ourselves to take so low a plane as 
to be held back from the iniquity only or chiefly by the fear of 
its truly fearful physical penalties. True manhood is not 
held back from vice — it is ever drawn irresistably toward the 
heavens by the divine hunger raging within. The real catas- 
trophy is unseen and unwitnessed save by the man himself, and 
is infinitely more deplorable than the cancered mouth, and the 
eaten nostril, and the rotten bones, which are its signal. O 
what a pitiful and what a needless wreck ! What of hope or 
promise can be said of such an one ? Having the heavens at 



THE VENEREAL DISEASES. 583 

his command, he yet allowed himself to drift and drift, on and 
on, going down an ever-blackening stream, until at last he 
became a part of Gehenna, and Gehenna grew to be the whole 
of him. " Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, 
this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw 
for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of 
honorable ambition, self-denial, and perseverence. In the fair 
city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the 
loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruit 
of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. 
A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a 
well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neg- 
lected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears. Sadly, 
sadly the sun rose ; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man 
of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed 
exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sen- 
sible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat 
him away." 

We turn away our faces ; and lo, a brighter sunrise greets 
our eyes. The clouds are breaking away from before the feet of 
the on-coming dawn. The very mists are decked with crimson 
and with gold. For it is the opening of the jewelled day ot 
strength and opportunity; and on the threshold in erect and 
eager poise there stands, in all his wealth of promise, the eager- 
hearted youth. The day rolls slowly onward up to its high 
noon of conflict ; and like a chieftan leading all his clan, so now 
the fuller manhood leads its every veteran faculty into the very 
furnace of the fight as all the noontide quivers with the fervent 
heat. The day glides swiftly on into the sheeny and empur- 
pled vistas of triumph which mark its setting sun, losing itself 
upon the very border of the golden strand that, reaching down- 
ward from the shining shore, extends into the sea to greet the 
bark which, thrust out from the shore of time, drops anchor in 
the haven of eternity. 



584 THE VENEKEAL DISEASES. 

Up ! man, up ! There are sweeter melodies waiting to be 
sung, than ever yet filled the longing ears of humankind. 
There is nobler work waiting for accomplishment, than man has 
ever yet done for fellow man. There are sweeter graces still to 
be, than ever yet bloomed within the human heart. Be satis- 
fied with nothing less than the making of your own the saying 
of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, the great British abolitionist ; — 
" I thank God that I have pursuits in life so deeply interesting 
as they proceed, and so full of promise in the magnitude of 
their results, that they deserve to absorb my whole being. I 
would not change objects in life with any living man." To so 
live is to be taken beyond a mere avoidance of disgraceful 
stain from the infernal, and lifted up into the very vestibule of 
the divine. 




I— I 

M 

a 

o 



APPENDIX A, 



THE INDIAN CLUB EXERCISE. 

THE PORTION ADOPTED IN THE BRITISH ARMY. 

1st. A club is held by the handle, pendent on each side (Plate II. fig. 1) J 
—that in the right hand is carried over the head and left shoulder, until it 
hangs perpendicularly on the right side of the spine (Plate II. fig. 2) ; that in 
the left hand is carried over the former, in exactly the opposite direction 
(Plate II. fig. 2), until it hangs on the opposite side ; holding both clubs still 
pendent, the hands are raised somewhat higher than the head (Plate II. fig. 
3) ; with the clubs in the same position, both arms are extended outward and 
backward (Plate II. fig. 6) ; they are lastly dropped into the first position. All 
this is done slowly. 

2nd. Commencing from the same position, the ends of both clubs are 
swung upward until they are held, vertically and side by side, at arm's length 
in front of the body, the hands being as high as the shoulders (Plate II. fig. 
4) ; they are next carried in the same position, at arm's length, and on the 
same level, as far backward as possible (Plate II. fig. 5) ; each is then dropped 
backward until it hangs vertically downward (Plate II. fig. 6) ; and this exer- 
cise ends as the first. Previous, however, to dropping the clubs backward, it 
greatly improves this exercise, by a turn of the wrist upward and backward, 
to carry the clubs into a horizontal position behind the shoulders, so that, if 
long enough, their ends would touch (Plate III. fig. 1) ; next, by a turn of the 
wrist outward and downward, to carry them horizontally outward (Plate III. 
fig. 2) ; then by a turn of the wrist upward and forward, to carry them into a 
horizontal position before the breast (Plate III. fig. 3) ; again to carry them 
horizontally outward ; and finally to drop them backward as already explained ; 
and thence to the first position. All this is also done slowly. 

3rd. The clubs are to be swung by the sides, first separately, and then 
together, exactly as the hands were in the last extension motion. 

THE NEW AND MORE BEAUTIFUL PORTION NOW ADDED PROM THE INDIAN 

PRACTICE. 

1st. A club is held forward and upright in each hand, the fore-arm being 
placed horizontally, by the haunch on each side (Plate IV. fig. 1) ; both are 
thrown in a circle upward, forward, and, by a turn of the wrist, downward 
and backward, so as to strike under the arms (Plate IV. fig. 2) ; by an oppo 
la 



APPENDIX A. 





PLALE H. 



APPENDIX 




/ 



JlFPENDDC a. 





PLATE IV. 



APPENDIX A. 5 

site movement, both are thrown back again in a similar circle, till they swing 
over the shoulders (Plate IV. fig. 3) ; and this movement is continued as long 
as agreeable. 

2nd. The clubs are held obliquelv upward in each hand, lying on the front 
of the arms (Plate IV. fig. 4) ; that in the right hand is allowed to fall back- 
ward (Plate IV. fig. 5), and swings downward, forward to the extent of the 
arm, and as high as the head (Plate IV. fig. 6) ; the moment this club begins 
to return from this point, in precisely the same direction, to the front of the 
arm, that in the left hand is allowed to drop backward, and to perform the 
advancing portion of this course in the time that the other performs the 
returning portion, so that each is at the same time swinging in an opposite 
direction. 

3rd. From either of the first positions now given, the clubs are, by a turn 
of the body and extension of the arms, thrown upwards and laterally (Plate 
V. fig. 1) ; — make, at the extent of the arms, and in front of the figure, a cir- 
cle in which they sweep downward by the feet and upward over the head 
(Plate V. fig. 2), and fall in a more limited curve towards the side on which 
they began (Plate V. fig. 3), in such a manner that the outer one forming a 
circle around the shoulder and the inner one round the head, (both passing 
swiftly through the position in the last figure of the first exercise,) they return 
to the first position ; — this is repeated to the other side ;— and so on alter- 
nately. 

4th. Beginning from either first position, the body being turned laterally, 
— f or example, to the left, the club in the right hand is thrown upward in that 
direction at the full extent of the arm (Plate VI. fig. 1), and makes the large 
circle in front and curve behind as in the last exercise (Plate VI. fig. 2), while 
the club in the left hand makes at the same time a smaller circle in front of 
the head and behind the shoulders (Plate VI. figs. 1, 2 and 3), until crossing 
each other before the head (rather on the right side), their movements are 
exactly reversed, the club in the right hand performing the small circle round 
the head, while that in the left performs the large one, — and these continue to 
be repeated to each side alternately. 

5th. The clubs being in either first position, the body is turned to one side 
— the left for example, and the clubs being thrown out in the same direction, 
make each, by a turn of the wrist, a circle three times on the outer side of the 
outstretched arms (Plate VII. fig. 1) : — when completing the third circle, the 
clubs are thrown higher to the same side, sweeping together in the large circle in 
front, as in the second exercise, the body similarly turning to the right ; but, 
instead of forming the smaller curve behind, both are thrown over the back 
(Plate VII. fig. 2) ; — from this position the clubs are thrown in front, which is 
now toward the opposite side, and the same movements are reversed ; — and so 
it proceeds alternately to each side. 

6th. In this exercise, the clubs are reversed, both being pendent in front, 
but the ends of their handles being upward on the thumb sides of the hands 
(Plate VII. fig. 3). The exercise consists chiefly in describing with the ends 
of the clubs two circles placed obliquely to each other over the head. For 



APPENDIX A. 





PLATE VI. 



APPENDIX A. 




PLATE VII. 



8 APPENDIX A. 

this purpose, the club in the right hand is, in a sweep to that side, first ele- 
vated behind the head, and thence passing to the left (Plate VII. fig. 4), the 
front, the right (Plate VII. fig. 5) behind, (where its continuation is indicated 
in fig. 5, and completed in fig. 6), thus forms its circle ; — meanwhile the club 
in the left hand, commencing when that in the right was behind the head, 
has passed on the back of its circle to the right, (Plate VII. fig. 5), while that 
in the right hand has passed on the front of its circle to the same side (Plate 
VII. fig. 5, the parts performed in both being marked by complete lines, and 
the parts to be done merely indicated) ; — and they continue, that in the right 
hand by the back, and that m the left hand by the front, toward the left side 
(Plate VII. fig. 6), and so on at pleasure circling over the head. 



APPENDIX B 



SOME GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON" THE PERFORMANCE OF 

MOVEMENTS. 

1. The movements should be performed with great accuracy, and start from 
a right commencing position. Every motion (bending, stretching, turning, 
etc.) should be fully achieved. It is only when performed in this definite 
way that the movements will have aU the effects anticipated. 

2. Each movement must be defined, not only as to form, but also as to the 
energy with which it should be executed, and the number of times it should 
be repeated. This may present some difficulties. In the description of the 
different movements, it is stated in figures as a guide, how often the same 
movement should be repeated, though with great scope for individual differ- 
ences. A thoughtful performer will find in his own experience of the move- 
ments a good guide in this respect. If a movement leaves an agreeable sensa- 
tion, this is a sign that it has been performed with appropriate force and fre- 
quency. It often happens that a feeling of weariness or a dull pain in the 
muscles arises in weak persons, unaccustomed to muscular exercise, but this 
should not induce them to leave off the movements altogether ; they should 
only for a couple of days perform them with less energy, and also reduce 
their number ; and then, after having practised for some time this minimum 
of movements, they should gradually increase them in both respects. 
Indeed, weak and ailing persons should always begin the exercises in this 
moderate way. As a rule, the movements should not induce fatigue, much less 
any pain in the muscles, which will not happen if the movements be propor- 
tioned to the amount of force and other peculiarities of the individual. 

3. If any real benefit is to be derived from the movements, a wise order 
with regard to food and drink — so essential to health — must be observed. 
You see the laborer, when poorly fed, become exhausted and weakened by 
work, which, if he had substantial food, would increase his powers and 
strengthen his health. A starving individual cannot derive any benefit for 
his health from exercises. But people are more frequently at fault in taking 
inappropriate food or taking food in too great quantity ; and it should be 
borne in mind that the wholesome effects of the movements will be lessened, 
if not quite neutralized, unless due moderation in eating and drinking be 
observed. 



10 APPENDIX B. 

4. The movements should be performed in a well-ventilated space. Fresh 
air being a condition necessary to health, it follows that the performance of 
exercises in close, stuffy air cannot bring about the intended wholesome 
effect, and, indeed, any continuance in rooms with vitiated air should be 
avoided as injurious to health. This is a well-known fact, but one that peo- 
ple cannot too often be reminded of, as they so often sin against this condition, 
of health, and, in most cases, without any necessity. Our climate too often 
compels the exercises to be performed within doors, and an over-carefulness 
too frequently prevents the admission of a sufficient amount of fresh air. 
Though it be true that one may easily catch cold indoors, it is not less true- 
that too warm and close an atmosphere develops m us a delicacy and a ten- 
dency to diseases which will be sure to manifest themselves sooner or later as- 
unavoidable consequences. Delicacy and over-carefulness are amongst the 
most dangerous enemies of health, whereas a sensible and moderate inuring 
to the influences of cool and fresh air is a powerful means for preserving 
health. Exercises performed in such air have more than double the beneficial, 
influence which they would have when performed in less pure air. 

5. A frequent and prudent use of cold baths and washing, being of great 
importance for the preservation of health, should be practised in connection 
with the gymnastic exercises and immediately preceding them in the morning. 
If people would but satisfy themselves by experience as to the usefulness of 
this procedure, then the aversion to the external use of cold water, which 
even in our days is not unfrequently to be met with, would be sure to disap- 
pear. If a reasonable diet be observed, if appropriate gymnastic exercises be 
daily performed, if fresh air and water become a daily treat, then bodily as 
well as mental power will increase, and many ailments will disappear. 

6. A rational use of gymnastic exercises does not imply an endeavor to per- 
form an infinite number of movements, still less an attempt to perform all 
movements that lie within the reach of possibility. Such efforts have no 
foundation either in science or sober experience. The human organism is 
limited in its action, as well on its physical as on its mental side, and what- 
ever goes beyond a certain limit is injurious to it. 

7. Gymnastic exercises should not be performed within one or two hours 
after a full meal, nor just immediately before it. The series of movements 
contained in a prescription should be performed at least once a day, and their 
beneficial influence will be increased if they are performed several times each 
day, provided they be well proportioned to the forces and the state of the per- 
former. A weakly person should take only a very limited number of move- 
ments each time, and repeat these frequently during the day; or he may 
divide a prescription, and perform the parts at different times in the day. 



APPENDIX B. 



11 



After washing or bathing the whole body in the morning, it is most useful to 
stimulate the action of the organs by some suitable exercises. And we may 
repeat here what is mentioned in another place, that a person who has 
adopted the habit of practicing systematic gymnastic exercises will find, by 
means of observing their effects upon himself, an excellent guide for their 
application in accordance with the requirements of health. 

8. It is most essential not to hold one's breath during the movements, but 
always to take quiet and deep breaths while performing them. There should 
also be a short interval between each exercise, which should be devoted to 
walking up and down whilst breathing deeply — at least, by those who have the 
use of their limbs. The dress for the exercises should be as light and loose as 
possible. 



DESCRIPTION OF PARTICULAR FORMS OF MOVEMENTS AND * 
THEIR EFFECTS. 



ARM MOVEMENTS. 



1. STANDING* ARM-RAISING, SIDEWAYS UPWARDS, 8—16 times. 

The stretched arms are moved slowly sideways and 
upwards till they attain a vertical position above the head, 
hands and fingers well stretched. While moving to this 
position, the arms are gently rotated outwards, so as to 
make the palms face each other when stretched overhead. 
Head and trunk to be kept straight, chest arched forwards, 
and arms kept well back during the movement. Without 
delay the arms are again slowly lowered through the same 
plane, till they re- assume the commencing position. 

Effect : This exercise causes a stretching of the back 
and the neck, and a pulling backwards of the shoulders, 
by bringing the muscles of the back and the back of the 
neck into action. The fore-arms, hands, and fingers 
being also kept on the stretch, their extensors (stretching 
muscles) are contracted during the movement. But the 
muscles that are put into the strongest action are those 
that raise the arms. 

This exercise tends to widen the chest and increase its 
mobility. It is an appropriate movement in general 
weakness, nervous debilitv, anaemia (poorness of the 
blood), weakness of the chest, difficulty of breathing, 
adhesion to the pleura? (the bags surrounding the lungs). 

Weak persons may experience some difficulty in raising the arms up to the 
vertical position ; if so, they may at first stop at the horizontal position, till 
they shall have overcome this difficulty through practice. 

♦Persons having some difficulty in standing may perform this and similar move- 
ments in a sitting posture. 




No. 1. 



12 



APPENDIX B. 




No. 2. 



2. STANDING ARM-CIRCLING, 8-16 times. 

The stretched arms are slowly moved 
straight forwards, upwards and side- 
ways down again, so as to describe a 
circle. After some practice the slow 
measure may alternate with a some- 
what quicker performance. 

During this exercise the muscles of 
the back, and those of the back of the 
neck, should keep the spinal column 
and the head quite straight; the hands 
also stretched by their extensors. 

Effect: The movement is carried 
out by muscles situated on the shoul- 
ders and the blade-bones. It acts ener- 
getically on the shoulder- joints, in- 
creasing their strength and mobility; 
it also widens the chest, and has a 
blood-relieving effect on the organs of 
the chest and head— that is, relieves 
these organs from congestion. 



8. STANDING ARM-THRUSTING, PORWARDS UPWARDS, 6—12 times. 

The stretched arms are quickly raised forwards upwards, so as to attain a 
vertical position at each side of tke head; then they are slowly lowered side- 
ways downwards, close to the sides. 

Effect: This movement resembles the preceding one, in so far as it 
describes the same figure, and calls the same muscles into action; but the 
raising of the arms is performed in quicker time and with greater energy (a 
kind of jerking motion), on which account it also has a more powerful effect. 
It may be used with advantage as a sequel to the preceding exercise, when 
this one has been practised for some time. 

4. STANDING SHOULDER-CIRCLING, 10—12 times. 

The shoulders are slowly moved, so as to describe a cirele forwards, 
upwards, backwards, and downwards. 

Effect: This exercise is performed by muscles attached round the shoul- 
der-joints and to the shoulder-blades. The shoulder-ring (i. e., the shoulder- 
blades and the collar-bones), as well as the joints and muscles belonging to 
the shoulders, are benefited by this exercise. During its performance the 
head is kept well up and the back stretched, which causes this exercise to 
have a very powerful effect on the respiratory organs. It counteracts weak- 
ness of the chest and tendency to catarrh of the lungs and consumption. 



APPENDIX B. 



18 



5. WING-STANDING ELBOW-MOVING, BACKWARDS, 8—10 

times. 

The hands are placed on the hips, the thumbs directed 
backwards, the other fingers forwards, the elbows side- 
ways. From this position the elbows are slowly moved 
backwards as far as possible, without any violent effort. 
Then they are allowed to so back to the commencing 
position, and the exercise is repeated in the same 
way. The head and the back should be well 
stretched, for in this case a powerful pulling back- 
wards of the shoulder-blades and shoulders, and also 
an expansion of the chest take place. 

Effect: This exercise counteracts a tendency to 
flatness of the chest, in strengthening the muscles that 
draw the shoulders and blade-bones backwards and 
arch the chest forwards. It counteracts tendency to 
consumption, asthma, and weakness of the chest. 




No. 5. 



6. STANDING ARM-BENDING AND STRETCHING, UPWARDS, 8—16 timei. 



The fore-arms are quickly bent upwards against the 
upper arms, the elbows kept close to the sides, the fingers 
slightly bent and pointing towards the shoulders. From 
this position the arms are sharply and energetically 
stretched upwards to a vertical position above the head 
(points of fingers foremost), the palms of the hands facing 
each other. This alternate bending and stretching of the 
arms to be repeated as stated above. 

Effect: See Note to No. 9. 

7. STANDING ARM-BENDING AND STRETCHING, SIDEWAYS, 

8 — 16 times. 

The arm-bending is performed as in the preceding exer- 
cise, then the arms are stretched horizontally sideways in 
a sharp awd energetic manner (points of fingers foremost), 
the palms turned downwards, as in the figure No. 11. The 
arms should be kept well back, so as to ease the chest and 
arch it forwards. The bending and stretching to be 
repeated as stated above. 

Effect: See Note to No. 9. 




No. 6. 



14 



APPENDIX A. 




No. 8 



8. STANDING ARM-BENDING AND STRETCHING, for- 

wabds, 8—16 times. 

From the bend-position (see 6) the arms are quickly 
and energetically stretched horizontally forwards par- 
allel to each other, the palms facing each other. 

Effect : See Note to No. 9. 

9. STANDING ARM-BENDING AND STRETCHING, BACK- 

WARDS, 6 — 12 times. 

From the bend-position (see 6) the arms are stretched 
backwards in as high a level as they possibly can be 
brought to without too great exertion, the palms facing 
each other. The head and back to be kept upright and 
quiet during the movement. 

Note to 6, 7, 8 and 9. — The above-mentioned arm- 
stretchings in different directions all proceed from a 
common starting position — the arm bend position. 
They act powerfully on the flexors and extensors (bend- 
ing and stretching muscles) of the arms, and the muscles of the chest; the 
back and the neck also nave an important share in the action. Moreover, 
these arm-movements increase the suppleness and strength of the shoulder 
and .elbow joints, and tend to widen the framework of the chest. Thus, the 
arm-stretching upwards widens the chest more especially in its lower and 
middle parts. The arm stretching sideways expands the chest especially in 
its further and upper parts. The arm-stretching fobwards causes the hinder 
and lower parts of the lungs to take in more air. If, in the arm-stretching 
backwards, the head and the back be kept perfectly straight, and the shoulders 
drawn backwards, this movement causes a widening of the chest in raising the 
upper ribs by means of a passive stretching of the muscles attached to them. 
Altogether, these bendings and stretchings of the arms in different directions 
have an extensive and powerful influence on respiration and circulation, be- 
sides their strong action on the muscles concerned in the movements, and 
above referred to. This assigns to them an important place in a prescription 
of movements for a general strenthening of the body. They are a specific 
remedy against weakness and rheumatic pains in the muscles and joints con- 
cerned in performing these movements. To persons with weak breathing 
power — common in those who lead a sedentary life — these movements are 
exceedingly valuable on account of the effect they have in strengthening the 
organs of respiration. In cases of poorness of the blood, nervous debility, and 
general weakness, they are useful, stimulating, as they do, the vital functions. 
In cases of chronic catarrh of the lungs, these movements are serviceable as a 
blood-relieving means. Persons with a week chest should, however, use them 
with due precaution. In cases of severe lung or heart disease, they should 
never be used without the advice of the physician. The energy in the per- 
formance of these movements should always be modified according to different 
individual circumstances. 



APPENDIX B. 



15 



The above arm-stretchings may also be executed alternately — that is, instead 
•of stretching both arms in the same direction, after having been previously 
bent upwards, they are stretched simultaneously in different directions, 
and then made to alternate with each other; thus: (a) one arm upwards, the 
other downwards; (b) one upwards, the other forwards; (c) one forwards, the 
■other sideways; (d) one upwards, the other sideways. In any case the respect- 
ive positions of the arms should be exchanged several times. 

The effects of these alternate arm stretchings in different directions are 
more powerful than when both arms are stretched in the same direction. 



10. 



STANDING arm-bending forwards and arm- 
flinging outwards, 6—12 times. 



Each bending and stretching in all the above mention- 
ed exercises should be completed with great accuracy. 

The upper-arms are raised horizontally, with the fore- 
arms sharply bent upon them, hands and fingers stretch- 
ed, palms turned downwards. From this position the 
iore-arms are smartlv and energetically thrust outwards, 
without any displacement of the upper-arms. The fore- 
arms being again quietly bent forwards in the same 
plane, the flinging motion outwards is repeated anew. 

Effect: This movement has very much the same 
effect as the arm-stretching sideways (see Nos. 7 and 
9), but it causes a stronger tension forwards of the 
chest; hence it is a specific remedy against a flattened 
and weakly chest. It is also 
-especially strengthening for the 
muscles that stretch the arm in 
the elbow- joint. 

11. CROSS-STANDING ARM-ROTA- 
TION, INWARDS AND OUT- 
WARDS, 10—20 times. 

The arms, being previously 
stretched sideways (cross -stand- 
ing position), are rotated round 
their long axis inwards (prona- 
tion) and outwards (supination). 
This rotatory movement is 
executed partly in the shoulder- 
joint, partly through the radius 
being rotated round the uln» 
(the elbow-bone), which latter 
action causes the hand to be 
turned also. 




No. 10. 




No. 11. 



(30) 



16 APPENDIX B. 

Effect: This movement, though apparently very simple, calls forth the 
action of a great many muscles situated on the arms, the shoulder, the chest, 
the back, most of them being the same as those concerned in bending and 
stretching the arms, but in this case acting in a peculiarly modified manner. 
Besides strengthening the shoulder- joints and the muscles concerned, it has 
a blood-relieving effect on the organs of the chest. 

It may also be combined with arm-raising (see No. 1); in this case it 
strongly influences the respiration*. 

12. HAND- AND FINGEB-MOYEMENTS, 8—16 times. 

(a) The hand may be bent towards the fore-side of the arm and stretched 
towards the back of the arm; it may also be bent outwards ("abducted") — 
that is, to the side of the thumb; and it may be bent inwards ("adducted") — 
that is, towards the side of the little finger. 

All these movements should be performed to the extent that the wrist-joints, 
admit of, and repeated 8 — 16 times in each direction. 

(b) A simultaneous and energetic bending of all the fingers, followed by a 
stretching in the same manner, to be performed as many times as the above. 

(c) A simultaneous spreading and closing of all the fingers (being well 
stretched), also repeated as above. 

Effect: These hand and finger exercises, though of great importance, are 
generally very much neglected. They call into action nearly all the muscles 
of the fore-arm, and exert a direct influence on the joints of the wrist and 
the fingers. If duly performed two or three times a day, these movements 
will counteract the weakness that so frequently arises in the hands and the 
arms from much writing, practising on the piano or the violin, etc. These 
movements are also effective against cold hands; and they are suitable, in 
cases of disturbances in the organs of the chest, as a means of relieving these 
organs from congestion. 

These hand and finger exercises may also be performed in combination with 
the arm-raising (see No. 1) or the arm-rotation (see No. 11,) which will greatly 
increase their effect. 

13. STANDING ALTBBNATE ABM-THBUSTTNG, ONE ABM UP, THE OTHEB DOWN, 

8—16 times. 

One arm being stretched upwards, the other downwards, the respective 
positions of the arms Rhould be exchanged by means of a quick and ener- 
getic thrusting of the down-stretched arm upwards and the up-stretched arm 
downwards. 

Effect: This movement tends to increase the mobility of the shoulder- 
joints and strengthen the muscles of the shoulder; it also stimulates respira- 
tion and circulation. 

14. HALF-STBETCH -GBASP-STANDING ABM-CIBCLING, 8—16 times. 

One arm being stretched up, the hand takes hold of a bar or a door-post, or 
anything of the kind, at arm's length above the head. The free arm performs 



APPENDIX B. 17 

the circling motion that is described in No. 2. The movement should be 
repeated, and the position changed alternately with both arms. 

Effect: The starting position expands the chest, and by this means this 
arm-movement has a more powerful influence on the respiration and circula- 
tion, without any great increase in the exertion. 

15. HALF-STRETCH-GRASP-STANDING ARM-BENDING AND STRETCHING, 6 — 12 

times. 

After having assumed with one arm the starting position indicated in No. 
14, the other arm should be bent and stretched as described for both arms 
in No. 6. A proper alternation in Dosition and motion of the arms should be 
observed. 

Effect: This exercise has a strengthening effect on respiration and cir- 
culation. 

16. REACH-GRASP-STANDING ARM-BENDING AND STETCHING, 6 — 12 times. 

The performer should stand facing a bar, a wall or a closed door, at a dis- 
tance of three feet. He then should place his hands against the object men- 
tioned, separating them at shoulder's breadth. This being done, the body is 
inclined forwards, resting its weight on the arms, which should be bent at the 
elbow-joints to right angles — elbows turned outwards on a level with the 
shoulders. Now the arms are slowly stretched again — somewhat resisted in 
this motion by the weight of the body —then the arms are bent again, and so on* 

Effect: This exercise calls the extensor muscles of the arms into very- 
strong action, the stronger the more the weight of the body is thrown upon 
the arms besides, the bending of the arms in this position expands the chest 
and promotes respiration. 

17. TRUNK- LUTING BY THE ARMS, 5—8 tim©€. 

This exercise requires some kind of apparatus— a fixed horizontal bar or 
board, or two hanging thick ropes fixed with two feet distance between them; 
in fact, anything of this kind arranged in the room will do for the purpose 
when attainable by the up-stretched arms. The hands grasp the support with 
up-stretched arms, having between them a distance corresponding to the 
breadth of the shoulders. This being done, the arms are slowly bent, thereby 
effecting a lifting of the body; the arms then are slowly stretched again, and 
the body lowered till the feet touch the ground (toes first). 

This exercise acts very strongly upon the flexor muscles of the arms and on 
the respiratory organs. 

A certain bodily strength is required for this movement, hence it caanot be 
performed by weak persons. It should never be used in severe cases of 
lung or heart disease. 

3a 



18 



APPENDIX B. 
LEG MOVEMENTS. 




18. STANDING ALTEKNATE TOE-AND HEEL-RAISING, 10 — 12 times. 

The heels are first raised so as to throw the whole weight of the body- 
on the toes, then the heels are lowered simultaneously and the toes 
raised, thus throwing the weight of the body on the heels, and so on- 
No. 18a. During the exercise the body should be kept upright, only accom- 
modating itself so far as to be able to keep its balance during the movement. 

Effect : This exercise is performed by the action of the muscles of the leg 
proper and of the feet, and consequently has a strengthening influence on 
these muscles. Besides, it brings a considerable number of muscles into action 
for the preservation of equilibrium during this exercise. This movement is a 
remedy against cold feet, which so often are to be found in people who lead a 
sedentary life, and generally in people who suffer from poorness of the blood 
and general debility. It is also a remedy against stiffness in the ankle-joints. 

Note. — This alternate raising of the heels and the toes may be performed, 
not only from the general fundamental position (as represented in fig. 
18a), but also in alternating this position with the close position of the feet, as 
represented in fig. 18b. This turning inwards and outwards ("clos- 
ing" and "opening" of the feet), added to the alternate raising of 
the heels and toes, also increases the effects of the exercise in tend- 
ing to strengthen the hip -joints and the surrounding muscles. 

No. 18b. 

19. WING-STANDING FOOT-CIRCLING, 12—20 times. 

This movement mi») be performed either standing, with the hands placed firmly 
on the hips ("wing-standing position"), or sitting, with support for the back. 
If performed from the former position, one leg should be stretched forward s 
and the foot caused to perform a circling motion, 
which should be repeated several times, first to one 
side, then to the other. Persons who experience 
some difficulty in standing on one leg may support 
themselves with one hand against some fixed object, 
or perform the foot-circling sitting. In the last- 
named case the movement may be performed either 
alternately or simultaneously with both feet. If al- 
ternately, one knee should be laid across the other, 
the support thus afforded to the leg by which the 
movement is performed helping to concentrate the 
motion more exclusively on the ankle-joint. If per- 
formed simultaneously with both feet, the legs should 
be stretched forwards, tbe heels resting on the floor. 
The feet then should perform the circling motion 
several times inwards and then several times out- 
wards. 

Effect; This movement is executed by the mus. 
No. 19. cles of the leg proper. It increases the mobility of 




APPENDIX B. 



19 



mobility of the ankle-joint, makes the feet warm, and relieves internal 
organs from undue affluence of blood. 

20. SITTING TOE-BENDING AND STRETCHING, 12 — 20 times. 

In the above exercise (19) the toes are put into some motion, but in a very 
imperfect manner, especially if the foot-circling be not performed in very 
wide shoes. A real exercise for the toes will be supplied by their bending and 
stretching, without moveing the rest of the foot. This movement must be 
performed either without shoes or in very wide and soft ones. 

The importance of this exercise lies in the fact that it can counteract or rem- 
edy the tendency to the deformity and partial paralysis of the toes so often 
brought about through unsuitable shoes and stockings.* 

Effect : This exercise, besides keeping up the mobility of the toes by 
strengthening their muscles, also tends to warm the feet. 

21. LYING LEG-CIRCLING, 8 — 16 times. 

Head and trunk should rest horizon- 
tally on some plane surface raised 
above the ground, the legs stretched 
beyond the support. (A strong person 
may keep himself in this position by 
taking hold of the edge with his hands; 
a less strong person should have some 
assistance with pressure on the shoul- 
ders, as seen in fig. 21 ; very weak peo- 
ple should never perform this exercise No. 21. 
at all.) The legs perform simultaneously a circling motion, first to the left 
then to the right. 

Effect : This exercise acts upon the abdominal muscles and those sur- 
rounding the hip-joints, and has a special blood-relieving and strengthening 
effect on the organs in the lower abdomen (the pelvis). If performed with the 
arms stretched above the head it increases respiration . 

22. HALF-LYING LEG-BENDING AND STRETCHING, 6 — 10 times. 

The back and head recline backwards on a slanting support. One leg at a 
time is sharply drawn up, with the knee bent towards the side of the chest, 
and then fully stretched forwards, the point of the foot foremost. This being 
repeated several times, the other leg should perform the same motion. 

Effect : When performed with energy, this exercise has a strengthening 
influence on the legs and a blood relieving effect on the upper parts of the body. 

23. STANDING KNEE-BENDING AND STETCHING, 5 — 10 times. 

First the heels are raised, then the knees are slowly bent to right angles, 
then slowly stretched again, and finally the heels lowered to the ground. The 
exercise is repeated as stated above . The trunk and head should be kept 
quite straight during the exercise. When, through practice, stability in 

* The cause of the evil must, of course, be got rid of in order to obtain real results 
from the exercise. 




20 



APPENDIX B. 




No. 23. 



performance is secured, the slow movement may alternate 
with a quick one. 

Effect : This exercise acts strongly on the extensor 
muscles of the legs ; and, on account of the rigidity of the 
head and back that should be observed during the exercise, 
it also brings the extensor muscles of these parts into 
action. It tends to make the joints of the lower extrem- 
ities supple and strong, and has a blood-relieving effect on 
the upper parts of the body. 

Note. — The same exercise may be performed from — (a) 
"Wing- Stan ding position (hands on hips); (b) Stretch- Stand- 
ing position (arms stretched upwards); (c) Cross-Standing 
position (arms stretched sideways); by which positions, 
more especially the two last-mentioned ones, the respiration 
and circulation are increased. 

24. BALANCE STANDING LEG-MOVEMENTS, 
(a) Wing Hook-standing Leg-Stretching, forwards, 4—8 times. 

The hands are placed on the hips. One 
knee is bent upwards, so that the thigh forms 
a right angle with the trunk, and another with 
the leg proper. Now the knee is stretched 
forwards, so as to bring the leg proper in a 
straight line with the thigh (point of foot 
foremost during the whole exercise). The 
knee should again be bent, and then the foot 
placed down heel to heel with the other one. 
The Mme exercise with the other leg, and so 
on alternately. 

(b) Wing-Hook-Standing Leg Stretching, out- 
wards, 4— 8 times. 

The knee being bent upwards as in the pre- 
ceding exercise, and turned outwards, the 
leg should be stretched out and finally brought 
back to the fundamental position (heel to 
heel). Now the same exercise with the other 
No. 24. leg, and so on alternately. 

(O) Wing-Standing Leg-Folding and Stretohing, backwards, 4—8 times. 

The leg first tightly bent (folded) in the knee-joint, is stretched backwards 
(see 24c) as far as possible, and finally brought back to the fundamental posi- 
tion. Then the other leg performs the same exercise, and so on. 
(d) Wing-Steading Leg-OhroHBg, 6-10 times. 

The stretched leg performs a wide circling motion directed forwards, out- 
wards, and backwards. It then re-assumes the fundamental position, and 
the other leg performs a simiar motion. 




i 



APPENDIX B 



21 





Note. — The four move- 
ments in the above group 
require a precision and 
readiness in the action of 
the muscles, so that they 
cannot be well performed 
if one has not already had 
some practice in exercises. 
They gradually increase 
the power of balancing, 
and the influence of the 
will over the muscles ; 
they also tend to make the 
lower extremities supple 
and elastic. 

25. WING-STANDING AL- 
TERNATE KNEE LIFT- 
ING, 15-20 times. 
The hands are placed on 
the hips; the knees are alternately lifted in a bent position as quickly and as 
high as is possible, without any too great exertion. Thus 
the weight of the body is thrown now on one foot now on 
the other (the toes first touching the ground). Head and 
trunk should be kept quiet in an upright and easy position, 
the. chest well arched forwards. The exercise may begin 
in a slow walking measure, and then gradually increase in 
rapidity till it attains the quickness of running. In the 
last case it becomes very straining and should not be ex- 
aggerated, but wisely moderated according to individual 
circumstances. 

Effect: This exercise, besides strengening the lower ex- 
tremities and making them supple and agile, greatly stimu- 
lates respiration and circulation, and, if performed with due 
moderation, produces an agreeable and genial warmth. 

(The observations in the beginning of this chapter should 
be constantly borne in mind — namely, that all the exer- 
cises should be performed with the greatest accuracy 
and attention, in order to secure the affects aimed at. ) 



No. 24c. 



No. 24d. 




TRUNK MOVEMENTS. 



No, 25. 



Movements of the trunk may be performed in the following main directions: 
— Bending forwards, backwards, and to the sides, also turning or rotation 
round its long axis. The trunk may also be made to describe a circle ("cir- 
cling," or moving in circumduction), which is, properly speaking, a combination 
of the consecutive headings of the trunk in all the above-mentioned directions. 



22 



APPENDIX B. 




>. WING-STANDING TRUNK-BENDING, FORWARDS AND BACKWARDS, 5-10 times. 

The trunk is slowly bent forwards from the hip-joints, then raised again and 
bent backwards in a similar manner, as far as the indi- 
vidual capacity allows, without any great exertion. 
During the exercise the legs should be kept straight, the 
chest arched forwards, the head not allowed to droop. 
Effect : By means of the alternate gentle contrac- 
tions and extensions of the muscles of the further and 
hinder side of the trunk, caused by this exercise, it 
stimulates and facilitates the functions of the organs 
in the chest and the abdomen. It causes an alternate 
stretching and shortening of the great veins, and thus 
stimulates the circulation of the blood within the ab- 
domen, the chest, and the head, thereby counteracting 
many disturbances brought about by impediments in the 
circulation. 

27. STANDING SIDE-BENDING, 5—10 times. 

No. 26. The trunk is slowly bent alternately to the left and 

the right without any twisting (fig. 27). The bending should be carried as far 
as it is possible without any great exertion, the legs 
kept straight ; head and arms should accompany the 
motion without being moved separately. The effects 
of this exercise may be increased in strength if it is 
performed from — (a) stretch-standing position (arms 
stretched above the head, see No. 6); (b) neck-rest 
standing position (arms bent up behind the head, 
fingers dovetailing in each other, the back of the head 
resting against these; see fig. 23b); (c) half-stretch 
standing position (one arm stretched above the 
head), with bending to the opposite side of the 
stretched arm. 

Effect : This exercise, like the preceding one, 
greatly increases the rapidity of the circulation, espe- 
cially in the portal vein (which carries blood from the 
stomach and intestines to the liver). If properly per- 
formed, the exercise is distinctly felt in the muscles 
No. 27. (and the skin) at each side of the waist, which are alter- 

nately contracted and extended. 

28. trunk-turning, 5 — 10 times, 
(a) Wing-Standing Trunk-Turning. 

Hands placed on the hips. The trunk is turned (rotated) round its long 
axis alternately to the left and the right without moving the legs. The back 
and the legs are kept straight during the movement. 




APPENDIX B. 





(b) Neck-Rest Standing Trunk-Turning. 

The commencing position should be taken as in fig. 28b (the elbows point- 
ing sideways, not forwards); then the 
movement should be performed as in- 
dicated above. 

Effect : A great number of the 
muscles of the trunk (having such a 
position relatively to each other as to 
make them co-operate in the turning) 
are brought into action by this move- 
ment, which, though effective, is by no 
means one requiring much exertion. 
The energy of its execution can easily 
be modified according to individual 
strength, it acts in a stimulating man- 
ner on the spine, on the organs of the 
abdomen, and also on respiration, this 
more especially when performed in the 
last-mentioned position. The pressure 
No. 28a. of the abdominal muscles on the intes- No. 28b. 

tines, alternating from one side to the other, effects on them a kind of knead- 
ing motion which stimulates their function. The turnings also cause an al- 
ternate shortening and extension of the great blood-vessels, and promote 
circulation, 

Note. — This movement may be strengthened, if performed with the feet in 
close-position (see fig. 18b). 

29. WING-STEIDE-STANDING TRUNK-CIR- 
CLING, 6 — 10 times. 

The commencing position is, hands on \ 
hips, feet placed sideways with a distance 
of two feet between them. The trunk is 
moved from the waist, describing as large 
a circle as possible, first to the left then 
to the right. The legs should be kept 
straight, the hips and head steady. (Per- 
sons who find it difficult to stand may per- 
form this exercise sitting.) 

Effect : This movement is performed 
chiefly by means of the muscles of the 
trunk situated around the hips. It causes 
a genera] compression of the viscera of 
the abdomen, and tends to remove con- 
stipation. By effecting an alternate short- 
ening and extension of the great blood- 
vessels, it promotes the circulation of the 




No. 29. 



24 



APPENDIX B. 



blood, more especially within the abdominal cavity. It counteracts many 
disturbances within the organs of the true pelvis (below the abdomen), such 
as catarrh of the bladder or the womb, haemorrhoids, &c. 

Note. — This exercise may be strengthened in its effects, if, during the cir- 
cling movement, the trunk is also turned (rotated round its long axis) to the 
left whilst circling to the left, and vice versa. 



30. WING-FORWARD-LYING TRUNK-HOLDING, 3 — 6 times. 

The performer having placed himself on a bench covered by a mattress,* in 
•uch a position that the front of his legs is supported up to (but not beyond) 

the hip- joints, and kept steady in this 
position by a person sitting on his legs 
(see fig. 30), or a broad strap being fixed 
across them, he should place his hands 
firmly on his hips, and then raise his head 
and trunk as much as possible. 

Having kept this position a short while, 
then he should slowly lower head and 
trunk towards the ground ; then again per- 
form the raising, and so on, alternately 
raising and lowering the trunk. 
Effect : This exercise brings into strong 
No. 30. action the extensor muscles of the back and 

the neck. It is an excellent movement for the development of an upright and 
easy bearing. It keeps the extensor muscles at both sides of the spine in 
equilibrium, thus counteracting any tendency to lateral curvatures of the 
spine. It counteracts, more than any other movement, the stooping of the 
frame which is so easily induced in weak or near-sighted people, and so com- 
mon in old age. 





31. 



WING-BACK-LYING TRUNK-RAISING, 

4 — 8 times. 



In this exercise the back of the legs 

rests on the support, and they are kept 

in their place as mentioned in No. 30. 

The upper part of the body is beyond 

the support, and is kept in a horizontal 

position by the action of the abdominal 

No. 31. muscles. After having maintained this 

position for a short while, the trunk is raised to a sitting position, then slowly 

lowered to the horizontal position, and so on. 

Effect : This exercise has a very strengthening effect on the muscles of 
the abdomen, and on digestion, it is also an effective means against costive- 
ness. 



* A sofa or some chairs put together will also do for the purpose. 




APPENDIX B. 25 

(To weak persons this exercise is rather straining, and they want, at first, 
somebody to help them. Strong persons may increase the effect of the move- 
ment by keeping their arms stretched above the head ) 

32. sit-lying trunk-raising, 3 — 6 times. 

The whole upper part of the body from the knees rests on the support. 
The knees are bent, the foot-soles rest- 
ing on the floor as when sitting. Some 
pressure should be applied on the knees, 
either by some person's hands or by a fixed 
strap, to enable the performer to raise the 
trunk steadily (keeping it quite stiff) to 
sitting posture. From this he should 
again go slowly down on his back, and so 
on. No. 32. 

Effect : This exercise has very much the same effect as the preceding one, 
but is somewhat easier to perform. 

83. STRETCH-STRIDE-STANDING TRUNK-BENDING, FORWARDS AND BACKWARDS, 

4 — 8 times. 

The arms are stretched above the head, the feet placed sideways at a dis- 
tance of two feet from each other. From this starting position the trunk is 
slowly bent forwards and downwards, as far as the individual capacity allows 
without any too great exertion. It is then slowly raised again, and bent back- 
wards under the same conditions. The arms and head should not be moved 
separately, but accompany the motions without any change in their relative 
positions. 

This exercise causes an alternate shortening and lengthening of the muscles 
on the further and hinder parts of the trunk and pelvis. It also causes a sim- 
ilar shortening and extension of the veins, by means of which the circulation 
of the blood is promoted, It has a stimulating effect on the functions of 
the vital organs in general. 

34 CROSS-STRIDE-STANDING JERK-TURNING, 6 — 10 times. 

The arms are stretched horizontally sideways, the feet placed sideways as 
in the preceding exercise. A sudden and jerking (but not violent) turning 
(rotation) of the trunk is performed to the left and right alternately. The arms 
are kept steady in their position and the legs straight. 

Effect : This exercise is performed chiefly by the muscles situated round 
the hips, and acts powerfully on the abdomen and pelvis, accelerating circula- 
tion more especially in these parts of the body. It has a highly stimulating 
effect, and is a specific in difficult breathing, as in lung emphysema and 
cramp in the chest (angina pectoris). 

35. WING-STRIDE -FORWARD -BEND- SITTING SCREW-ROTATION, 8 — 16 times. 

The performer is seated with the feet separated and hands on hips. The 
head and the trunk are inclined forwards so as to form an acute angle at the 
hip-joints. In this position the trunk is rotated alternately to the left and 
right by quick jerking (screwing) motions without losing the inclined position. 



26 APPENDIX B. 

Effect : This exercise is most effective against slow circulation in the 
lower abdomen, in chronic diarrhoea, gastric catarrh, haemorrhoids, catarrh, 
of the bladder, &c. 

HEAD MOVEMENTS. 



The movements of the head (or, properly speaking, of the neck) consist,, 
like those of the trunk, in bending, turning (rotation), and circling (mov- 
ing in circumduction). They are easy to understand from description alone, 
without any illustrations being necessary. 

36. head-bending, forwards and backwards, 5—10 times. 

The head is slowly bent forwards, then raised in the same manner, and. 
finally bent backwards as far as can be done without any great exertion ; then 
raised again, and so on. The rest of the body is kept steady during the 
exercise. 

37. STANDING HEAD-BENDING SIDEWAYS, 5—10 times. 

The head is bent alternately to the left and right, as far as the mobility in 
the vertebrae of the neck permits without any great strain, and without mov- 
ing the rest of the body. 

38a. standing head-turning, 5 — 10 times. 

The head is turned alternately to the left and right, as far as convenient. 
This should be performed without any bending of the head or turning of the 
shoulders. 

38b. STANDING ALTERNATE HEAD TURNING AND BENDING, 5 — 10 times. 

The head, being previously turned to the left, is bent forwards, then raised 
and bent backwards, still retaining its turn-position; then raised again and 
turned to the opposite side, where the bendings are performed in the manner 
before stated. 

39. STANDING HEAD CIRCLING, 6—10 times. 

The head describes slowly as wide a circle as can be done without straining, 
several times to the left and then as many times to the right. The shoulders,, 
as well as the rest of the body, to be kept perfectly quiet during the motion. 

Note. — None of the above head- movements call for any great muscular 
exertion, but they have not the less a general stimulating and strengthening 
effect on the muscles of the neck. They counteract and cure stiffness in the- 
joints between the vertebrae of the neck and the head. They also promote 
circulation in the brain, especially if performed with deep breathing. Con- 
sequently they are effective in cases of either congestion of blood in the 
brain or too small supply of blood to that organ. 



The following movement, being a complex one, can be performed in an 
accurate manner only by peopli who have acquired some previous practice in 
simple exercises. 

It should be borne in mind that the organs of movement in man possess a 
capability of great variation in the form of movements, as well as the pos- 
sibility of attaining by practice the utmost perfection of purity and beauty of 



APPENDIX P.. 



27 



form in each of thein. What an immense difference between 1 the tottering 
movements of the infant, or the want of precision in the performance of new 
motions in any untrained person, when compared with the great perfection 
in execution to which a person may attain by training. 

Any exercise that, being in strict accordance with physiological and hygienic 
laws, is calculated to overcome our natural "awkwardness," and bring about 
ease and precision and general sense of equilibrium in movement, is a well- 
defined and good exercise. 

It is by the use of such exercises that the will acquires the full domination 
over the so-called voluntary muscles, and enables them to perform the move- 
ments in accordance with the ideal formed by the mind. 

This is in perfect analogy with the methodical mental exercises for the 
brain, by means of which the mental faculties are brought to their develop- 
ment and clearness, and the individual exercised in the use of them. 

40. PASS-POSITIONS WITH FOOT- AND ARM-CHANGING, 6—12 times. 

Essentially the same form of movement as the " fencing pass." The feet 
are placed at a right angle, heels together, the arms are bent in the elbow- 
joints, fingers pointing towards the shoulder. Now the left foot is moved in 
its own direction (outwards), and placed on the floor at a distance of three 
foot-lengths from the heel of the 
light foot. At the moment that 
the foot touches the floor, the left 
knee is bent so as to stand just over 
the point of the foot, and the 
weight of the body is thrown on 
this leg. The other leg is stretched, 
so as to form one straight and slant- 
ing line with tne trunk and head. 
Simultaneously with the left foot 
assuming the described position, 
the left arm is stretched above the 
head and the right one backwards 
(see fig. 40). Now the slanting po- 
sition is resumed (heels together, 
arms bent), and then the same 
movement should be performed to 
the opposite side by the right foot and arm. 

This exercise may be varied thus : — 

(a) Instead of moving the left foot three foot-lengths forwards-outwards, 
as in the above, it may be moved the same distance backwards-outwards (that 
is, in a straight line with the long axis of the other foot). In this case the fur- 
ther (the right) knee is bent, and the corresponding arm stretched upwards, 
the other backwards, and so on. 

(b) The foot may be placed three foot-lengths straight forwards, or three 
foot-lengths straight backwards. In the last cases, as in the first one, the 
movement should be performed the same number of times with one foot as 




No. 40. 



*S APPENDIX Bv 

with the other, the knee of the further leg bent and the corresponding arm 
stretched upwards, the other backwards. 

The exercise should be performed slowly at first, but when due accuracy in 
its performance is acquired, it may be performed with great smartness An 
alternation of slow performance with more rapid will prove advantageous. 

Effect : This exercise brings about a very extensive nervous and muscular 
action, and has a general stimulating and strengthening effect. It produces 
elasticity and ease in bearing. However, it should, like all other movements 
for hygienic purposes, be kept within the limits of moderation. 



APPLICATION OF MOVEMENTS FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES. 



Strengthening Movements for persons whose daily occupations do not afford them suffi- 
ciently all-sided muscular exercue, and who are suffering, more or less, from poorness 
of the blood (anaemia), muscular and nervous debility, weak respiration, gout, obesity. 

PRESCRIPTION I. 

1. Standing Arm-Raising, sideways upwards - See No. 1 

2. Neck-Rest-Stauding Trunk-Turning - 28b 

3. Standing Alternate Toe- and Heel-Raising - 18a 

4. Standing Arm-Rending and Stretching upwards 6 

5. Wing-Stride-Standing Trunk-Circling - 29 

6. Wing-Hook-Standing Knee-Stretching forwards - - - 24a 

7. Standing Head-Circling _____ 39 

8. Wing-Standing Elbow-Moving fiackwards 5 

PRESCRIPTION II. 

1. Standing Arm-Circling - - - - - No. 2 

2. Standing Alternate Toe and Heel- Raising - 18a 

3. Wing-Standing Trunk-Bending, forwards and backwards - - .26 

4. Wing-Standing Alternate Knee-Lifting > - - - - 25 

5. Standing Arm-Bending and Stretching, upwards, sideways, and forwards 6, 7, 8 

6. Stretch-Standing Side-Bending - - - - 27 

7. Standing Arm-Raising, sideways upwards, with Rotation inwards and 

outwards - - - - - - - 1, 11 

8. Standing Head-Bending, forwards, backwards, and sideways - - 36, 37 

9. Standing Arm-Raising ------ 1 

PRESCRIPTION III. 

1. Standing Arm-Thrusting, forwards upwards - - - 3 

2. Cross-Standing Knee-Bending and Stretching - - - 23c 

3. Neck-Rest-Standing Trunk-Turning and Side-Bending - - 28b, 27 

4. Standing Arm-Bending and Stretching, upwards, sideways, and forwards 6, 7, 8 
6. Wing-Standing Trunk- Bending, forwards and backwards - 26 

6. Half-Lying Leg-Bending and Stretching ... - 22 

7. Standing Head-Circling and Head-Turning - -39,38a 

8. Standing Alternate Toe- and Heel-Raising - 18a, b 
9 Stretch-Stride-Standing Trunk-Bending, forwards and backwards- - - b3 

10. Standing Arm-Raising ..--_- 1 

PRESCRIPTION IV. 

1. Standing Arm-Raising .-____- 1 

2. Standing Alternate Toe- and Heel-Raising - 18a b 

3. Cross-Stride-Standing Jerk-Turning - " - - - 34 

4. Wing-Standing Alternate Knee-Lifting ----- 25 

5. Stretch-Standing Side-Bending ------ 27a 

6. Standing Shoulder-Circling -.__-- 4 

7. Wing-Hook-Standing Knee-Stretching - 24a 

8. Standing Head-Bending, forwards, backwards, and sideways, alternately 

with Head-Circling ------ 36.37,39 

9. Standing Arm-Bending and Stretching, upwards, sideways, forwards, and 

backwards - - - - - - - -6, 7, 8, 9 

0. Stretch-Stride-Standing Trunk-Bending, forwards and backwards - 33 

PRESCRIPTION V. 

1. Standing Arm-Raising ------ l 

2. Standing Alternate Toe- and Heel-Raising - 18A, B 

3. Standing Shoulder-Circling ----- 4 



1 




APPENDIX B. 2& 

4. Standing: Arm-Thrusting-, forwards upwards - 3 

5. Wing-Stride-Standing Trunk-Circling - - - - 29 

6. Wing-Standing Leg-Circling ----- 24d 

7. Standing Head-Bending, forwards, backwards, sideways, Head-Turning 

and Circling ------ 36—39. 

8. Standing Arm-Raising, sideways upwards, with Arm-Rotation and Hand 

and Finger-Bending - - - - - 1, 11, 12 

9. Wing-Standing Trunk-Bending, forwards and backwards - - 26 

10. Cross-Standing Knee-Bending and Stretching ... 23b 

11. Neck-Rest-Standing Trunk-Turning ... 28b 

12. Standing Arm-Bending and Stretching, upwards, sideways, forwards and 

backwards - - - - - - 6, 7, 8, 9 

13. Stretch-Standing Side-Bending - 27a 

14. Stretch-Stride-Standing Trunk-Bending, Forward and backward - 3 

PRESCRIPTION VI. 

1. Standing Arm-Thrusting, forwards and upwards 3 

2. Stretch-Standing Side-Bending - - - - - 27a 

3. Wing-Standing Alternate Knee-Lifting 25 

4. Neck-Rest-Standing Trunk-Turning ----- 28a 

5. Standing Head-Bending, Turning, and Circling - - 36—39 

6. Standing Arm-Bending and Stretching, Simultaneously in different direc- 

tion - - - - - - 9a, b, c 

7. Wing-Standing Trunk-Bending, forwards and backwards - - - 26 

8. Pass-Positions, with Foot- and Arm-Changing - - - 40 
9 Standing Arm-Circling - - - - - 2 

The above prescriptions are progressive, so as to be serviceable for different 
conditions of health and strength. Weak persons should begin with the first 
prescription, and during the first days perforin the movements in a gentle 
manner, and repeat each of them only a few times ; then they should gradu- 
ally increase the frequency and energy in the performance as they feel their 
strength increase. By degrees, as health and strength increase, they should 
take up the next prescription, and so on. 

After having gained some practice and experience in gymnastics, the per- 
former can try and put together other movements than those given in these 
prescriptions. 

There should, however, not be too frequent changes, for, so long as a per- 
son feels benefited by performing the movement belonging to a certain pre- 
scription, he should go on with this one, till he feels that its salatary influence 
becomes diminished — then it is time to make a change. 

MOVEMENTS FOR GROWING YOUNG PEOPLE WHO DO NOT SUFFER FROM ANY 

ORGANIC DISEASE. 

That appropriate muscular exercise is necessary for the healthy develop- 
ment of young people is a fact that is now generally recognized by those who 
have an insight to the laws of human development. The free play is the vital 
element of youth, but it does not render systematically arranged exercises 
superfluous in education. For it is only through these that the educator can 
ascertain that all-sided and harmonious development of the organs which 
should be the base for all sound education. Rational exercises give a stimulus 
to the unfolding process of the organism itself, and essentially contribute to 
counteract the tendency to disturbances of the bodily balance, caused by the 
exigencies and constraints of civilized life, especially school-life. 

Unfortunately, schools have not, as yet, satisfactorily solved the problem 
of giving an appropriate share of physical education to their pupils. Even 
where something is done in the right direction, it is generally not quite 
sufficient for the purpose, as the time afforded seldom exceeds a few half- 



£0 APPENDIX B. 

hours of exercises in a week ;* it is, therefore, but right that the home should 
supply the want. 

The following prescriptions are meant for home use. One of the distin- 
guishing features of the Swedish System of rational gymnastics is, that it has 
recourse to the resources of the human organism itself, and consequently is as 
much as possible independent of external objects. However, it is by no means 
averse to certain gymnastic appliances if judiciously employed. I would, for 
instance, recommend that there should be in every house two thick vertically 
hanging ropes firmly fixed to the ceiling or a door lintel, at two feet distance 
from each other, for all members of the family to perform on daily a hanging 
or trunk lifting exercise. The hands grasp the ropes at equal height above 
the head, and support, for a short moment, the whole weight of the body 
either by simply hanging with straight arms, or — if the person be sufficiently 
strong — by slowly bending the elbows, thus lifting the body, This trunk- 
lifting should be repeated 3 — 6 times, and, when the body is lowered at inter- 
vals between, this should be done slowly, with the toes always touching the 
ground before the heels, to avoid any nervous commotion. There ought also 
to be in each house a few appropiate implements for children and young people 
to perform some simple manual labor. This would afford them an occupation, 
both useful and pleasant, in their leisure hours. 

PRESCRIPTION I. 

1. Standing- Arm-Raising- _____ See No. I 

2. Cross-Standing Knee-Bending and Stretching- - 23c 

3. Wing-Forward-Lying Trunk-Holding - 30 

4. Standing Arm-Bending and Stretcbing, upwards and sideways - -6,7 

5. Wing-Backward-Lying Trunk-Raising - 31 

6. Standing Alternate Toe- and Heel-Raising ... 18a, b 

7. Neck-Rest-Standing Trunk-Turning - 28b 

8. Wing-Standing Alternate Knee-Lifting - - - - 25 
9 Wing-Standing Trunk-Bending, forwards and backwards - 26 

10. Standing Arm-Thrusting, Forwards upwards - - - - 3 

PRESCRIPTION II. 

1 . Standing- Arm-Thrusting, forwards upwards - - - - 3 

2. Neck-Rest-Standing Alternate Knee-Lifting 20 

3. Wing-Fur ward-Lying Trunk-Holding - - - - 35 

4. Balance- Standing Leg-Movements _._.-.- 2lA, B, C, D 

5. Cross-Stride-Standing Jerk-Turning - - - - 34 

6. Standing Arm-Bending and Stretching, upward, sideways, forwards, back- 

wards - - - - - - 6,7,8,9 

7 Wing- Backwards-Lying Trunk-Holding - 31 

8- Trunk-Lifting --_--- 17 

9. Standing Head-Bending, forwards and backwards, Head Turnind and Cir 

cling - - - - - - 36, 38, 39 

10. Neck- Rest-Standing Alternate Toe- and Heel-Raising - - 18a, b 

11. Stretch-Standing Side-Bending -.--.--.- 27a 

12. Standing Arm-Flinging outwards - 10 

PRESCRIPTION III. 

1. Standing Arm-Thrusting, forwards, upwards - - - 3 

2. Cross-Stride-Stan ding Jerk-Turning - - - - 34 

3. Wing-Standing A Vjjrnate Knee-Lifting - 25 

4. Neck-Kest-Standing Trunk-Turning - - - - 28b 

5. Wing-Standing Leg-Circling - - - - - 24D 

6. Standing Head-Circling, Turning, and Bending - - 39,38,36,37 

7. Pass-Positions, with Foot and Arm-Changing - - - .40 

8. Stretch-Standing Trunk-Bending, forwards and backwards - -36 

*How many schools are there in England, especially for girls, where systematic 
physical education is entirely neglected! 



APPENDIX B. 31 

MOVEMENTS FOR INFANTS. 

Systematic movements may be adopted for children at almost any age. 
The limbs of infants are capable of receiving so-called passive movements— 
movements given by another person, — and at the age of three or four years 
the child can have also passive-active ("duplicated") movements— movements 
where another person gives resistance or assistance during the movements. 
The mother, or any other tender and careful person (having previously 
acquainted herself with the movements) can perform this as well as any of the 
duties of child-nursing in general. 

Some people may perhaps feel inclined to ask whether systematically 
arranged exercises are necessary to healthy children, who are of themselves 
inclined to move about as soon as they begin to walk or even to crawl. To be 
sure it is the happy instinct of nature that drives children (as well as the 
young of animals) to begin as soon as possible to perform movements, so 
beneficial to their healthy development, and which take their beginning from 
their sprawlings in the very first days of their existence. This instinct testi- 
fies decidedly to the necessity of bodily exercise even in the very earliest age, 
and surely it cannot be considered an undue encroachment upon nature to 
watch over and, in some measure, incite the movements ; not more so than it 
is to aruard and educate it in other respects. For it should be borne in mind 
that there are many things which tend to mislead the instinct in children. 
And it is not less important that they should have all- sided exercise than it is 
for people of more advanced age. The tender limbs of infants experience as 
wholesome and pleasant influence from such exercise as those of maturer per- 
sons, supposing, of course, that the movements be well adapted to the 
strength of the little ones. 

Many ailments in children — such as gripes, costiveness, &c. — should be 
treated with passive movements ; frictions of the abdomen, with stretched 
fingers, and kneading of the abdomen (the bent fingers of both hands press- 
ing the abdomen from each side alternately). Gymnastics is a remedy which 
should be taken up in every-day life as one of the vital conditions for health. 

PRESCRIPTION I. 

1. Stretch-Standing Arm-Circling (Passive), 6 — 10 times. 

Standing behind the child, one grasps its hands from the insides, and, hav- 
ing brought its arms in stretch-position (upwards), one makes them gently 
describe simultaneously a circling motion outwards. 

2. Wing-Forward-Lying Trunk-Holding. (See No. 30.) 

(A child can easily perform this movement on a mattress or an ordinary 
sofa.) 

3. Sretch-Lying Leg- Separation and Closing. 

The child, lying on its back with the arms stretched above the head, should 
slowly move its stretched legs one to each side, and as slowly bring them back 
again close to each other. The assistant, having previously grasped the heels 
of the child, makes a gentle resistance to these motions.* 

* Well-proportioned resistance to a motion strengthens and modifies its effects . 



33 appendix b. 

4. Wing-Sitting Spiral -turning. 

The child is seated erect on a stool, hands on hip. The assistant stands 
in front, grasping its shoulders (one from before, the other from behind), 
and, slightly pressing with his knees those of the child, so as to keep 
them in their place during the motion, he moves the trunk of the child in a 
circle, first to one side, 5 — 8 times, then to the other as many times. 

5. Stretch-Lying Leg-Bending and Stretching. 

The child lies on its back, with the arms stretched above the head; the assist- 
ant grasps its heels, and makes a slight resistance whilst the child bends its 
legs (drawing them up as much as possible), and again stretches them, and so 
on, 5 — 8 times. 

6. Wing Lying Trunk-Raising 4—6 times. 

The child, lying on its back, rises slowly to sitting posture, the assistant 
meanwhile facilitating the motion by pressing his hands on the knees of the 
child. 

7. Stretch-Lying Arm-Bending and Stretching. 

The child, lying on its back, with the arms stretched above its head, bends the 
arms to the sides, and again stretches them 6 — 8 times. The assistant, having 
previously grasped the child's hands from the insides, makes a gentle resist- 
ance to these motions. 

movements for elderly persons. 

1. Half-Stretch-Grasp-Standing Arm-Circling - - - No. 14 

2 Wing-Stride-Standing Trunk-Circling ... - 29 

3 Sitting Foot-Circling - .-'..._]§ 

4. Wing-Standing Trunk-Bending, forward and backward - - 2% 

5. HaH'-Lying Log-Bending and Stretching - - - - 23 i 
6 Standing Shoulder-Circling - 4 

7. Neck-Rest-Sta iding Trunk-Turning ----- a$B 

8. Half-Stretch-Grasp-Standing Arm-Uircling ... 14 

9. Standing Head-Bending, forwards and backwards, and-Head-Tur»ing M, 38 
10. Standing Arm- Raising - - 1 

It is a satisfactory and not a very uncommon thing to see an aged person 
enjoy bodily and mental health. Old age, however, is the stage of life where, 
in accordance with the laws of nature, a decrease in strength takes place. But 
it is one of man's precious duties to do all in his power to conserve his bodily 
and mental powers as long as possible in full vigour. One of the chief means 
for attaining this aim is bodily exercise. But the exercise should be stimulat- 
ing and not fatiguing; they should invigorate the forces, and not exhaust 
them. Just as old people's food should be nourishing and easy to digest, so 
should the exercises never go beyond what is appropriate to their force. 

MOVEMENTS AGAINST CONGESTION TO THE HEAD AND HEAD-ACKB. 
PRESCRIPTION I. 

1. Standing Arm-Raising - No. 1 

2. Sitting Foot-Circling - - - - - 19 

3. Wing-Stride-Standing Trunk-Circling - 39 

4. Standing Arm-Raising wiih Hand and Finger-Movement - -1,12 

5. Neck-R^st-StandingTrunk-Turnincr ... 26b 

6. Cross-Standing Knee-Bending and Stretching - 23C 

7. Half-Stretch-Grasp-Standing Arm-Circling - 14 

8. Standing Head-Bendincr, forwards and backwards, and Head-Circling 36, S9 

9. Wing-Standing Elbow-Moving backwards - - 5 

10. Standing Head-Turning and Bending ... 38b 

11. The same as 1. 



APPENDIX B. 



33 



PRESCRIPTION II. 

1 . Half-Streteh-Grasp-Standmg Arm-Bending and Stretching - No. 15 

2. Wing-Standing Alternate Toe- and Heel-Raising - 18 

3. Wing-Standing Trunk-Bending, forwards and backwards - -26 

4. Half -Lying Leg-Bending and Stretching - 22 

5. Standing Head-Bending, Turning, and Circling - - 36,37,36,39 

6. Cross-Standing Arm-Rotation with Head- and Finger-Movements - 11, 12 

7. Cross-Stride-Standing Jerk-Turning - - 34 

8. Lying Leg-Circling ----- 21 

9. Stretch-Standing Side-Bending - - - 27a 
10. Standing Arm-Raising- ------ l 

Weak persons should perform the movements with great moderation and 

only repeat them a few times. Stronger persons may perform them with 

more energy, and repeat them much oftener at each practice. 

MOVEMENTS AGAINST NARROWNESS OP THE CHEST, ASTHMA, CONSUMPTION IN 

ITS EARLY STAGE. 
PRESCRIPTION I. 

1. Standing Arm -Thrusting, forwards, upwards - No. 3 

2. Cross- Standing Knee-Bending and Stretching - - 23c 

3. Neck-Rest-Standing Trunk -Turning - 28b 

4. Wing-Standing Elbow-Moving, backwards - 5 

5. Half -Stretch-Gr rasp-Standing Arm-Bending and Stretching - - 15 

6. Cross-Stride-StandingJerk-Turning 34 

7. Standing Alternate Toe- and Heel-Raising - - 38a 

8. Neck-Rest-Standing Side-Bending - 27b 

9. Standing Arm-Flinging outwards - - - - 7 

10. Standing Shoulder-Circling _--_-- 4 

11. Standing Arm-Raising - 1 

PRESCRIPTION II. 

1. Wing-Standing Elbow-Moving backwards - - 5 

2. Standing Arm-Thrusting, forwards upwards - 3 

3. Neck-Rest-Standing Trunk-Turning - - - - 28b 

4. Standing Arm-Bending and Stretching upwards and sidewise - 6, 7 

5. Stretch-Standing Knee-Bending and Stretching - - - 23c 

6. Stretch-Standing Side-Bending - 27a 

7. Pass-Position - - 40 

8. Front-Lying Trunk-Raising - 30 

9. Cross-Standing Arm-Flinging outwards - 10 

10. Wing-Standing Trunk-Bending, forwards and backwards - 26 

11. Standing Arm-Raising - - - 1 

The second prescription is stronger than the first one, and should not be 
taken up till some practice in gymnastics and increase in strength have been 
gained through performing for some time the first prescription. Through 
the widening of the chest and strengthening of the respiratory organs in 
general that are brought about by these movements, the voice also acquires 
more power. The above movements, therefore, may be recommended for 
orators, singers, and stammering people. 

MOVEMENTS AGAINST UNEVEN AND WEAK CIRCULATION OP THE BLOOD, AND 

AGAINST HEART DISEASES IN THE EARLY STAGE. 

PRESCRIPTION I. 

1. Standing Shoulder-Circling - - - No. 4 

2 Sitting Foot-Circling - 19 

3. Wing-Stride-Standing Trunk-Circling -* - 29 

4. Wing-Standing Alternate Toe- and Heel-Raising - - 18a 

5. Half -Stretch-Grasp-Standing Arm-Circling - - - 14 

6. Neck-Rest-Standing Trunk-Turning - - - 28 B 
1 . Standing Arm-Raising - - - - 1 

8. Wing-Standing Trunk-Bending, forwards and backwards - - 26 

9. Half -Lying Leg-Bending and Stretching - 22 
10. Left-Stretch-Grasp-Standing Heart-Percussion * 
11 Wing-Standing Elbow-Moving, backwards - - 5 

* Tho left arm is stretched above the head, and kept in this position by the hand grasp- 
ing some suitable support; the left side of the chest is slightly arched forwards, the 
right hand performs a tapping round the region of the heart (keeping the upper arm 
as quiet as possible). This movement has a calming effect on the action of the heart. 



34 APPENDIX B. 

ft. Ncck-Rest-Standi ng Alternate Toe- and Heel-Raising - -No 18A 

7. Ncck-Rcst-Standing Trunk-Turning - - 28b 

8. Standing Arm-Bending and Stretching, upwards, sideways, and forwards, 6, 7, 8 

9. Mictch-Standing Side-Bending, - - 27A 
10 Standing Arm-Raising - - - j 

PRESCRIPTION II. 

1. Half-Stretch-Grasp-Standing Arm-Bending and Stretching * ' - 15 

2 Gross-btrid -Manning Jerk-Turning - - - - 34 

6. Wmg-Backvvaids- Lying Trunk-Raising - - 31 

4. VVing-s»audkig Alternate Knee-Lifting - - 25 

5. Wi.jg -S rid'-Si. ndi ng Trunk-Circling - 29 
<i Rcnca-Jrasp-Standn.g Arm-Bending and Stretching - - 16 
,. str tch-S i * -St tiding Trunk-Bending forwards and backwards - 33 

8. Wmg-StandingL^g-Circling - - - 24d 

9. Ncck-ites -Sending Side-Bending - 27b 

10. Standing IIond-l>nding and Circling, - - 36,37,39 

11. Standing A m-Raising - - - 1 

MOVEMENTS AGAINST HAEMORRHOIDS (PILES). 

1. Wing-Standing Trunk-bending, forwards and backwards - No. 26 

2. C\>5s-.->:a d i.. g K > icv-Bending and Stretching - - 23b 

3. W i :ig-Sa\do-. .landing Trunk-Circling - - 29 
4 Wmg- 5 anding Kuee-Lifting - - - 25 
a lice..- :cs -Standi ::g Trunk-Turning - - 28b 

6. S:re ci- r ><di. m Ivnee- Bendiug and Stretching - - 23c 
7 Cross-Srridi tandrng Jerk-Turning - - - 34 
8. Wing- I ^ k- ■vanning L- g-S fetching, forwards and Sideways - - 24a, b 
1>. Nc.'.-Lt s - tandi ng Side-Bending - - 27b 

10. Lyincr 1/ t- :\ Img - - - 21 

11. Standing Ar n-Beudingand Stretching, sideways, forwards and upwards, 7, 8, 6 

This complaint (which manifests itself by swelling or bleeding of the veins 
at Hie lower part of the rectum) is generally of a secondary nature — I. E., 
•depending on disturbances in the abdominal organs, or on diseases in the 
lungs or the heart; it is therefore necessary, especially in the latter cases, with 
due regard to the original complaint, to perform the movements with less 
vigour, and even exclude some of the more straining ones. 

MOVEMENTS AGAINST INGUINAL HERNIA (RUPTURE). 

It is a fact established by experience that appropriate movements can cure 
inguinal ruptures of recent date, and even those of longer standing, if not of 
any severer kind. The scientific explanation of this fact is that, by certain 
movements, the muscles that surround the rupture are strengthened and 
increased in bulk, so as to contract the passage of the rupture. 

A truss is necessary to prevent the falling out of the hernia; but it has no 
active strengthening influence on the muscles as the movements have; con- 
sequently, it does not render these superfluous. 

1 . Winor-Stride-Forward-Bend-Standing Arm-Raising* - No.l 

2. C^oss-Stridc-Standing Jerk-Turning - 34 
8. Balance-Standing Knee-Bending and Stretching - 24a, b, O 

4. Wing-Gaekward-Lving Trunk-Raising - 31 
6. Strei h-^tandinsr Knee- Binding and stretching - - 23b 

6. Neck-' iest-St-iuding Trunk-Turning - - 28b 

7. Standing Arm- hrusting, one arm up, the other down - 13 

8. The same as 4. 

o B <lr -Bick-Support-^tandinstf Leg -Bending and Stretching, forwards 24 

10. M id : idi sr Vi m- Thrusting forwards upwards, - 3 

- led nt a distance of two feet from each other; the trunk is slightly 
bent for war i.h tho chest arched. From this starting position the Arm-Raising is 

port' >'T.Vf I 

+ Tin back rests against a wall (or a door), the left knee is bent up and stretched for- 
wards sev M-al. times as described in 24; then the right leg performs the same motion as 
many times, und so on. 



APPENDIX B. 35 

PRESCRIPTION II. 
i. Half-Stretch-Grasp-Standing Arm Circling - - No. 14 

2. Wing-Stride-Standing Trunk-Circling - - 29 

3. Standing Arm-Raising, sideways upwards, with Rotation inwards and 

outwards - - - - - - -11, 1 

4. Cross-Standing Knee-Bending and Stretching - - 230 
5 Wing-Standing Trunk-Bendiug, forwards and backwards - , 26 

6. Neck-liest-Standing Alternate Toe- and Heel-Raising - - ?8b 

7. Stretch-Standing Side-Ek-nding - - - 27a 

8. Half-Lying L"g- Bending and Stretching - - 22 

9. Standing Head-Turning and Circling - - 38, 39 
10. Standing Arm-Raising - - - 1 

MOVEMENTS TENDING TO RELIEVE THE BOWELS. 

1. Cross-Stride-Standing Jerk-Turning - No. 34 

2. Wing-Standing Leg-Stretching, backwards - - 240 

3. Wing-Backwurd^-Lying Trunk-Raising - 31 

4. Wing-Standing Alternate Knee-Lifting - - - 25 

5. Wing-Stride-Standing Trunk-Circling and Turning 29 

6. Lying Leg-Circling - - - - 21 

7. Neck-Rest-Standing Trunk-Circling - 28b 

8. The same as 3. 

9. Wing-Hook-Standing Leg-Stretching forwards and backwards - - 24a, c 

10. Stretcn-Standing Side- Bending - - - 27a 

11. Standing Arm-Thrusting, forwards upwards - 3 

The above movements, are useful against costiveness, have all of them some 
influence on the organs of digestion, though their influence is by no means 
limited to these. Persons in very different states of strength can perform these 
movements; but those in a weak state should, of course, perform them with 
less energy and frequency. In either case it would be advantageous to per- 
form all or part of the movements in the prescription two or three times in the 
day. The here-mentioned complaint, like other chronic diseases, wants time 
for the cure to work out its effects. 

MOVEMENTS AGAINST CHRONIC DTARRHCEA. 

1. Wing-Stride-Forward-Bending-Sitting Screw-Rotation - - No. 35 

2. Sitting Foot-Circling - 19 

3. Wing-Stride-Standing Trunk-Circling - 29 

4. Forward-Bending-Sitting Arm-Bending and stretching* - 6 

5. The same as 1. 

6. Half-Lying Leg-Bending and Stretching - - # 22 

7. Stretch-Standing Trunk-Bending, forwards and backwards - 33 

8. Half-Stretch-Grrasp-Standing Arm-Circling 14 

9. Stretch-Step-Standing Side-Bendingt - - 27a 
10. Standing Arm-Raising - - 1 

MOVEMENTS AGAINST BAD DIGESTION (DYSPEPSIA), CHRONIC GASTRIC CATARRH, 

CARDIALGIA (HEART-BURN), COLIC (GRDPES). 

These ailments of digestive organs are generally adcompained by obstruction 
of the circulation of the blood in the abdominal organs (especially in the 
portal vein system), and also general nervous complaints, such as hypochondria 
(spleen), hysteria, &c. The following prescriptions are therefore calculated to 
relieve these complaints as well. 

PRESCRIPTION I. 

1. Standing Arm-Thrusting, Forwards upwards - - No. 3 

2. Wing-Standing Trunk-Bending, forwards and backwards - - 26 

3. Half-Lying Leg-Bending and Stretching - - - 22 

4. Wing-Stride-Standing Trunk-Circling - - - 29 

5. Wing-Stride-Forward-Bend-Sitting Screw-Rotation - - - 35 

* Seated on a chair or sofa, with the trunk bent forwards in the hip-joints (to a slant- 
ing position ), the bending and stretching should be performed as in No. 6. 

t One foot standing on an elevation two feet high. The Side-Bending is performed 
to the side where the foot is raised. 



36 APPENDIX B. 

Here may be repeated what is already said in the Introduction — that the pre- 
scriptions here given are not meant to render the advice of a physician super- 
fluous, nor to fully supply the place of movements prescribed by an examined 
practitioner of the Swedish movement-cure. They are rather meant to induce 
people to seek advice in the first threatenings of a disease, and thus avert it, 
if possible. 



APPENDIX C, 



RULES AND REGULATIONS FOR THE GYMNASIUM. 

1. No pupil shall do any exercise without his gymnastic belt and shoes. 

2. Every pupil shall hang up his clothes during exercise, and his belt and 

shoes after exercise, in the places appointed for those purposes. 

3. No pupil shall tie knots in the ropes, or displace in any way any portion 

of the apparatus. 

4. No pupil shall attempt any exercise which has been forbidden, or shall 

do on one machine an exercise which properly belongs to another 
(such as jumping the vaulting horses, etc.). 

5. No pupil shall attempt to use, or lift from the racks any bells, or bar, 

heavier than those which have been allotted to him by the instruc- 
tor. 

6. The bells and bars must be lifted from the rack and placed in position 

at the target at once, and not be rolled on the floor. 
I No pupil shall fence, or play single-stick, without his mask, jacket, and 

glove, or thrust at another who is not so prepared. 
i No pupil shall use or displace another's belt, shoes, arms, mask, &c. 



TECHNICAL TERMS. 

The Step is the action, simple or compound, of which certain exercises, as 

climbing, are composed ; every action throughout such exercises being 

but a repetition of the first step. 
The Position is the attitude of body assumed previous to the initiatory 

step, and reassumed on the completion of every succeeding one. 
The Reach is the point to which the hand is raised on the full upward 

extension of the arm. 
The Half-Reach is the point, opposite the face, to which the hand is 

raised when the fore-arm is bent nearly at a right angle with the upper 

arm. 
The Rest is the point, opposite the breast, to which the hand is raised or 

lowered when the arm is completely bent. 
The Distance is the space between the hands when they are placed at the 

width of the shoulders, as in vaulting. 
'The Space is the distance between any two regularly recurring points of a 

machine, as the rounds of a ladder. 



38 



APPENDIX C. 



Yielding is the action of the body performed to avoid shock or concussion 

on dropping from a height, described at page 52. 
The Leading hand, foot, or side, is the one which takes the lead in any 

exercise. 
The Supporting hand, foot, or side, follows the leading one. 
The Reversed Grasp of the hand is when the palm is turned inwards, 

towards the face. 
The thumbs and fingers are said to be together when in grasping an object 

the thumb and forefinger do not separate ; they are said to be meeting 

when they partly or wholly encircle an object and meet, or nearly so, 

from opposite sides. 



Fig. 1. 




THE DUMB BELLS. 

Exercise. No. i. 

Attention. — Position of attention, the bells together on the target, the 
toes at the bells. 

Step to the Rear. — Make a full step to the rear with the left foot, the 
right following. 

Left Foot Forward. — Make a half face to 
the right, by turning on the heels, so that the 
left heel touches the inside of the right, and step 
to the front with the left foot, the left hand 
grasping the thigh just above the knee, as the 
foot comes to the ground, the right arm extended 
in the line of the right leg. 
Right Hand.— Seize the bell with the right 
hand, the lower limbs remaining in position (Fig. 1). 
Up. — Raise the bell above the shoulder (bending the arm during the ascent) 
Fig. 2. to the full extension of the arm, leaning strongly 

on the left knee and pressing the breast to the 
front daring the ascent of the bell ; in this posi- 
tion the left leg to the knee, and the left arm 
should form one continuous line from foot to 
shoulder (Fig. 2). 

Down. — Lower the bell, replace it on the tar- 
get, and recover, bringing the left foot back to 
the right. 

Right Foot Forward.— 1. Face to the left, 
the right foot pointed straight to the front. 2. 
Step out with the right foot, as with the left 
foot forward. 

Left Hand.— Seize the bell with the left 
hand, the lower limbs remaining in position. 
Up. — As with the right hand. 
Down.— As with the right hand. 




appendix c. 
Exercise. No. ii. 



89 



Left Foot Forward. — As before. 

Both Hands.— Seize a bell in each hand, the arms passing 
on either side of the knee, the right on the right, and the left 
on the left side. 

Up. — Raise the bells above the shoulders (bending the anus 
during the ascent) to the full extension of the arms, keeping 
the left knee bent, and pressing the breast to the front during 
the ascent of the bells (Fig. 3). 

Down. — Bring the bells straight down by the sidob, replace 
them on the target, and recover. 

Right Foot Forward.— As before. 

Bote: Hands.— As before. 

Up. — As before. 

Down. — As before. 



Exercise. No. m. 



Fit?. 3. 




Left Foot Forward. — As before. 

Recovering. Right Hand.— Seize the bell with the right 
hand. 

Up. — Recover, and at the same time elevate the bell above 
the shoulder to the full extension of the arm (Fig. 4). 

Left Foot Forward.— Step to the front with the left foot, 
retaining the bell at the elevation above the shoulder, and 
pressing the breast to the front. 

Down. — As before. 

Right Foot Forward.— As before. 

Recovering. Left Hand.— Seize the bell with the left 
hand. 

Up. — As with the right hand. 

Right Foot Forward. — As with the left foot forward. 

Down.— As before. 



Fig. 4. 




40 



APPENDIX C 



Exercise. No. iv. 



Fig. 5. 



Left Foot Forward.— As before. 

Recovering. Both Hands.— Seize the bells as in second 

Up. — Recover, and at the same time raise both bells above 
the shoulders to the full extension of the arms (Fig. 5). 

Left Foot Forward. — As before, retaining the bells at 
the elevation. 

Down. — As before. 

Right Foot Forward. — As before. 

Recovering. Both Hands. — As before. 

Up — As with the left foot forward. 

Right Foot Forward.— As with the left foot forward. 

Down.— As before. 

Exercise. No. v. 



Step to the Front. — As in first practice. 

Astride. — As in first practice (Fig. 6). 

Up and Down. (Six Times). Ready. — As in first practice 
stoop from the waist, and seize the bells, one in each hand (Fig). 7. 

Up. — The action and position of the ascent as in first practice, carrying the 
bells above the shoulders (Fig. 8). 




Fig. 6. 



Fig. 7. 



Fig. 8. 






on> 



Down. — Lower the bells, letting them swing to the rear between the legs, 
the instructor giving the word 'down,' the learners counting the numbers, 
the numbers to be counted in a clear and full tone, the sound to be prolonged 
over the time occupied in the ascent from the waist to the full extension of 
the arm. 



APPENDIX C. 41 

Halt.— Replace the bells on the target, and resume the position of attention. 
Step to the Rear. — As before. 

Exercise. No. vi. 

Left Foot Forward.— As before. 

Right Hand. (Six Times.) Ready.— Seize the bell with the right hand, 
as in first exercise. 

Up. — Repeat the first exercise six times, the instructor giving the word 
'down/ the learners counting the numbers, as before directed . 

Halt. — Replace the bell on the target and recover. 

Hight Foot Forward.— As before. 

JjEPt Foot. (Six Times.) Ready. — Seize the bell with the left hand. 

Up. — As with the left foot forward. 

Halt. — As with the left foot forward. 

Exercise. No. vn. 

Left Foot Forward. — As before. 

Both Hands. (Six Times.) Ready.— Seize the bells, one in each hand, as 
in second exercise. 

Up. — Repeat the second exercise six times, the instructor giving the word 
'down,' the learners counting the numbers. 

Halt. — Replace the bells on the target and recover. 

Right Foot Forward. — As before. 

Both Hands. (Six Times.) Ready.— As before. 

Up. — As with the left foot forward. 

Halt. — As before. 

Exercise. No. viii. 

Left Foot Forward. —As before 

Recovering. (Six Times. ) Right Hand. —Seize the bell with the right hand. 

Up. — Repeat the third exercise six times, recovering at each elevation of the 
bell, the instructor giving the word 'down/ the learners counting the num- 
bers. 

Halt. — Replace the bell on thetarget and recover. 

Right Foot Forward.— As before. 

Recovering. Left Hand. — Seize the bell with the left hand. 

Up. — As with the left foot forward. 

Halt. — As before. 

Exercise. No. ix. 

Left Foot Forward. — As before. 

Recovering. (Srx Times.) Both Hands. — Seize the bells as in fourth 
exercise . 

Up. — Repeat the fourth exercise six times, recovering at each elevation of the 
bells, the instructor giving the word ' down,' the learners counting the numbers. 

Halt. — As before. 

Hight Foot Forward.— As before 

Recovering. (Six Timjcs.) Both Hands.— Seize the bells as with the left 
4 oot forward. 



APPENDIX C. 

Up. — As with the left foot forward. 
Halt.— As before. 
Step to the Front. — As before. 

Places. — Stoop from the waist and seize the bells, and place them in the 
racks. 




THE BAR BELLS. 

Exercise. No. i. 

Attention. — As with the dumb bells, the bar along the centre of the target, 
Fig. 9. Fig. 10. right and left. 

Step to the Rear. — As with 
the dumb bells. 

Left Foot Forward. —As 
with the dumb bells. 

Ready. — Seize the bar at the 
distance with both hands, the 
fingers over the bar, the thumb 
under, the lower limbs remain- 
ing in position (Fig. 9). 

Up. — Raise the bar above the 
head (bending the arms during 
the ascent) to the full extension 

a n ) ^ Jze^UJ _] \ of the arms, pressing the breast 

to the front, with the head erect, 
the eyes directed to the front, leaning strongly on the advanced leg, and the 
rear leg held straight and firmly braced back (Fig. 10). 
Down.— Lower the bar with the arms bent, replace it on the floor and 
Fig. 11. recover. 

Right Foot Forward.— As before. 
Ready.— As with the left foot forward. 
Up.— As with the left foot forward. 
Down. — As before. 

Exercise. No. il 

Left Foot Forward. — As before. 

Recovering. Ready. — Seize the bars as in first 
exercise. 

Up. — Recover, and at the same time elevate the 
bar above the head to the full extension of the arms 
(Fig. 11). 

Left Foot Forward. — Step to the front with the 
left foot, retaining the bar at the elevation above 
the shoulders, and pressing the breast. 

Down. — As in first exercise. 
Kioht Foot Fokwabd.— As before. 




APPENDIX C. 



45 



Recovering. Ready.— As with the left foot forward. 
Up.— As with the left foot forward. 
Right Foot Forward. — As with the left foot forward. 
Down. — As before. 

Exercise. No. in.- 
Step to the Right. — Make a half face to the right, and step to the right as- 



Fig. 12. 



Fig. 13. 




with the dumb bells bring- 
ing the toes of the right 
foot, just within the bell 
the left following, the 
heels touching each other. 

Step to the Left. — As 
with the dumb bells. 

Ready. — Seize the bar 
at the centre with the 
right hand (Fig. 12). 

Up. — Raise the bar 
above the head and hold 
it in a horizontal line at 
the full extension of the 
arm (Fig. 13). 

Down. — Lower the bar with the arm bent, and replace it on the ground, 
and replace the right arm in position, extended in the line of the right leg. 

Ready. — Seize the bar at the centre with the left hand. 

Up. — As with the right hand. 

Down. — As with the right hand, and come to the position of attention at 
the target. 

Face to the Right.— Turn on the heels, facing to the right, reversing the 
position of both lower and upper limbs. 

Step to the Rear. — As before. 

Exercise. No. rv. 

Left Foot Forward. — As before. 

Ready. — Seize the bar as in first exercise. 

Up.— As in first exercise. 

On the Shoulders . (Six Times . )— Lower the bar 
by the rear until it descends upon the shoulders, 
pressing the breast to the front, and leaning strongly 
on the left knee (Fig. 14). 

Up. — Elevate the bar to the extension of the arms ; 
the instructor giving the word 'up/ the learners 
counting the numbers. 

Down. — Lower the bar by the front at the full 
extension of the arms, replace it on the ground, and 
recover. 



Fig. 14. 




44 



APPENDIX C 



Right Foot Forward.— As before. 

Ready. — As with the left foot forward. 

Op. — As in first exercise. 

On the Shoulders. (Six Times.)— As with the left foot forward 

Up. — As with the left foot forward. 

Down. — As before. 

Exercise. No. v. 



Fig. 15. 




Fig. 16. 



Left Foot Forward.— As before. 

Hands Reversed.— Extend the arms to the front ? 
turning the palms of the hands upwards (Fig. 15). 

Ready. — Seize the bar at the distance, the palms 
of the hands under the bar. 

Up. — Raise the bar above and slightly in front of 
the head, to the full extension of the arms. 

On the Breast. (Six Times.)— Lower the bar by 
the front until it descends upon the breast, pressing 
the breast to the front, and leaning strongly on the 
left knee, the head slightly held back, the eyes 
directed to the front (Fig. 16). 

Up. -Elevate the bar to the extension of the arms ; 
the instructor giving the word 'up/ the learners 
counting the numbers. 

Down. — As in fourth exercise. 

Right Foot Forward. — As before. 

Hands Reversed. — As before. 

Ready. — As with the left foot forward. 

Up. — As with the left foot forward. 

On the Breast. (Six Times.) Up.— As with 
the left foot forward. 

Down. — As before. 

Exercise. No. vi. 
Left Foot Forward.— As before. 
Up and Down. (Six Times.) Ready. — Seize the 
bar as in first exercise. 
Up. — Repeat the first exercise six times, the 
instructor giving the word 'down/ the learners counting the numbers. 
Halt. — Replace the bar on the ground, and recover. 
Right Foot Forward.— As before, 

Up and Down. (Six Times.) Ready.— As with the left foot forward. 
Up. — As with the left foot forward. 
Halt. — As before. 

Exercise. No. vii. 

Left Foot Forward. — As before. 

Recovering. (Six Times.) Ready. — As in first exercise. 
Up. — Repeat the second exercise six times, the instructor giving the word 
"down/ the learners counting the numbers. 




APPENDIX C. 45. 

Halt. — Replace the bar on the ground, and recover. 

Eight Foot Forward.— A.s before. 

Recovering. (Six Times.) Ready.— As with the left foot forward. 

Up.— As with the left foot forward. 

Halt. — As before. 

Step to the Front. — As before. 

Places.— Stoop from the waist and seize the bar, and place it in the racks. 



WALKING.* 



In walking the whole column of the body is slightly inclined to the front ; 
the lower limbs are lightly lifted upward and forward, with every extensor 
muscle relaxed, and every joint mobile and free, and with a slight lateral 
oscillation of the body, marking the advance and rest of the foot, right and 
left, which is perceptible in the jostle and separation of two men walking at 
close order without keeping step. The foot is not placed flat, or all at once 
upon the ground — indeed in rapid walking the whole of the foot is never on 
the ground at the same time. The heel first meets the ground, and the con- 
tact gradually extends from it to the toes, the heel being lifted by the time 
this act is accomplished. The arms are allowed to swing to front and rear in 
alternated action with the lower limbs, f 

*A clear distinction must, at the outset, be drawn between walking- and marching-, 
as taught in military drill. The latter must ever be regarded as a military exercise, in 
which the soldier, for professional considerations, is taught to preserve an attitude 
more or less formal and constrained ; the former has but one object, viz., facility of 
progression, and every point of position and action i9 made subservient to this end. 
Military drill, however, from the very circumstance of its being an exercise in which 
the action and position of the different parts of the body, during locomotion, are sys- 
tematized and prearranged, is most valuable to the young and growing, and should be 
regularly taught in schools. It is admitted that, as a rule, boys dislike drill, but this I 
am sure is in a great measure owing to the monotonous manner in which it is taught 
and the want of tact and discrimination frequently shown by the instructor. Boys, 
and especially little boys, usually have it not only too frequently and too much of it 
at a time, but they are Kept at the commencement too long, at the least attractive, 
although very important, parts of it ; i. e., the balance steps, facings, and slow time. I 
find it is better to pass over these quickly, and to take up the more palatable quickstep, 
stepping short, stepping out, forming fours, &c. ; and at short intervals to return to pick 
up a little oF what was prematurely passed. The drill never exceeds half an hour, 
once or twice a week, and in fine weather only. 

+It must be premised that it is difficult, if not impossible, to lay down laws and rules 
to be observed by all in the performance of these three modes of progression, or, as 
they may be termed, natural exercises— walking, running, and leaping. It is found 
that many men, from organization or habit, have a mannerism, i. e., a special mode of 
gait, action, or preserving position, which although an error on general grounds, has, 
from such special causes, become serviceable to them, and which to alter would often 
be to reduce not to add to their power. Where such distinctive mannerism exists the 
aim should rather be to cultivate the natural capacities in this particular style of exe 
cution to its highest point, always admitting that the mannerism would not disqualify 
the effort in comparative trials. 



46 APPENDIX C. 

The remarkable mechanism of the human foot itself emphatically teaches 
the manner of its use. The heel, which first comes in contact with the 
ground and receives the whole superimposed weight, is composed of a single 
solid bone, capped with the most powerful tendon in the body, and with a 
cutaneous covering many times thicker than is to be found on any other part 
of the body, the whole presenting a smooth and rounded surface, firm but 
elastic, yielding to strong pressure, but instantly recovering its rounded form 
on the pressure being removed. Immediately in front of the heel springs the 
arch of the instep, over which the burden of the body is transferred to the 
front of the foot. Here the structure changes entirely to meet the change in 
the duty to be performed ; there is no shock to be encountered, so the strong 
single bone of the heel, overlaid with firm muscle and thick cuticle, gives 
place to a different mode of construction, — to many bones of different sizes, 
also protected with muscles and ligaments and cuticle, but softer and more 
sensitive, spread upon a broader surface, and with many prominences and 
indentations to take advantage of every inequality of grouud ; for the require- 
ment here, on the poise of the body, is stability rather than strength ; and to 
complete this security the whole line of the front edge of the foot is divided 
into five separate parts (toes) of different lengths, dimensions, and degrees of 
strength, allowing each separate part, while acting in concert with all the 
others, to take its individual grasp of the ground according to the nature of 
the surface on which it rests. This terminating act in the compound move- 
ment composing the step is so important that a large portion of the leg also is 
fashioned and placed to aid in its performance ; the mass of muscle forming 
the calf of the leg has for its primary object to raise or lift the heel, while 
the toes have yet the ground for fulcrum, anticipatory of the forward act of 
propulsion of the next step ; and it is this gradual, springy action, which at 
once gives development to the limb, and in return receives from the limb elas- 
ticity and spring in proportion to its development. 

The initiatory practice in walking should be performed quite irrespective of 
time, correct action and position being the sole points to be aimed at ; these 
acquired, the longer courses should be used. 

The action and position in walking are the same for all degrees of speed, 
except that as the speed is increased all the features of the position become 
more distinct and prominent, and all the points of the action are intensified ; 
the step will be wider, yet never so wide as to cause additional effort ; a 
stronger act of propulsion will come from the rear foot, a more distinct tran- 
sition from heel to toe will take place on the advanced one ; and the natural 
oscillation of the upper limbs to front and rear, alternating with the action of 
the lower ones, will become more energetic and in a great measure regulated 
by the muscular contraction of the limbs themselves. 



APPENDIX C. 



47 



SLOW TIME. SHORT DISTANCE. 
Exercise 1. Advance the left foot a free step, at the same time incline 

Course I. t b e column of the body to the front ; 

the head, neck, trunk, and right leg forming a line slightly Fig. 1. 

slanting from rear to front ; the right heel raised from the 
ground, the lower limbs supple, the left knee bent, the 
right nearly straight ; the arms hanging naturally by the 
sides, the palms open, but not spread, and turned inwards 
towards the thighs, but not touching them ; the fingers 
together but not extended ; the whole column of the body 
unconstrained; the head and neck perfectly free (Fig. 1.) 

Press lightly from the right foot, quit the ground and 
let the limb swing to the front, the body retaining its for- 
ward inclination. When the right foot ha3 swung to the 
front the length of the step, softly place it on the ground, 
the heel first, the toes last, and as these descend raise the 
heel of the left, now relieved of the weight of the body, 
which will have been transferred to the right. Repeat. 

After the slow time, in order to acquire correct action and position, walking 
should be practiced as follows :— 

Exercise 2, • . , . , „, 

Course II. At half speed ._ .Short distance. 

Exercise 3. A . , «, , ,. 

Course III. At s P eed Short distance. 

CouL'e W. AtSpeed --- Longdistance. 




RUNNING. 



The exercise of running is, in both action aud position, different from that 
of walking. In the former there is but one foot on the ground at a time, and 
immediately after the completion of each step both feet are removed from the 
ground. There is no gradual descent and rise, no marked transfer of super- 
imposed weight, no distinct point of change of the centre of gravity. At 
first, and before the full rate of speed is attained, the body is inclined to the 
front as in walking, but the speed being attained, and the proper momentum 
acquired, the column of the body is involuntarily brought towards the verti- 
cal line by the rapid and sustained advance of the lower limbs. In walking, 
progression is accomplished by a succession of separate steps, each step 
beginning only on the termination of the preceding one, each successive step 
requiring a re-adjustment of equilibrium, and a distinct renewal of propul- 
sive effort. Running is more like a succession of leaps, every bound pos- 
sessing part of the forward momentum of its predecessor, this momentum 
being sustained or augmented by the energy of the flexions and extensions of 
the lower limbs. 



48 APPENDIX C. 

With a man unaccustomed to running, I would say, let him begin with a 
mile ; setting himself to cover the distance in about eight or nine minutes, at 
the easiest pace and make-believe race he can run in, Let him break from his 
walk to the ground into this easy trot, and practise it until he find his wind 
decidedly improved, and the work, such as it is, pleasurable. He may then 
do one of two things— either increase the distance by another half mile, to be 
run at the same pace, or hold to the first course and cover the distance in one 
or two minutes less. When the mile can be run in six minutes as easily as it 
was run in eight, let the tactics be changed ; let him break the uniformity of 
the run, and cultivate variety of pace ; let him begin the race, as at first, at 
an easy trot ; keep at it for a quarter of the distance to allow the organs of 
respiration and circulation to take up gradually the accelerated action which 
is demanded of them as soon as the trotting begins, allowing also the muscles 
employed in locomotion to take up their accelerated action when the walk- 
ing is relinquished ; let the second quarter be done in the same style but at a 
somewhat quickened pace, still keeping within the margin of easy perform- 
ance ; and let the third, if the preceding causes no distress, be quicker still, 
gradually culminating towards its close to an effort at the utmost strain of 
the powers ; and last, let it subside in the fourth quarter gradually into the 
first easy trot, ending in the effortless walk, to allow the throb of the heart 
and swell of the arteries and veins to subside and settle down, and the lungs 
to resume their peaceful tidal motion, and the air current in their cells its 
rythmical ebb and flow. 

In training for the performance of some difficult pedestrian feat, the exer- 
cise should be begun and conducted with the greater method and care, and 
all its separate features should be studied, and every other exercise enlisted in 
its service which can be brought to bear upon the parts of the body employed ; 
both as aids to local muscular power hy developing the voluntary muscles 
directly engaged in locomotion, and the involuntary muscles and all parts of 
the frame engaged in respiration. 

In running, as in walking, there are three points to be specially observed, — 

1st. The length of stride. 

2nd. The rapidity of step. 

3rd. The endurance ; or that stamina which enables a man to continue the 
exertion, and repeat indefinitely the step without reduction of its other two 
qualities — of rapidity and length. 

For the first quality length of limb is undoubtedly the chief requisite, and 
may be said therefore rather to be inherited, when possessed, than acquired : 
although not entirely, as the freedom and fullness of the stride may be facili- 
tated by promoting the mobility of the joints connecting the lower limbs with 
the trunk, and it is greatly owing to the neglect of this point when we see men, 
as we often do, stepping under their stride ; and the habit of stepping short once 
acquired, it is very difficult to relinquish it without encroaching on the sec- 
ond quality, rapidity. Length of stride is, however so very valuable, that no 
care and no labor should be spared in cultivating it. If but one inch in the 
step be gained, without trenching on its velocity, it will give fifty yards in 
the mile. 



APPENDIX C. 49 

For the second quality, rapidity, there is still something due to possession 
by inheritance, though undoubtedly more is left to culture ; some men in 
addition to great mobility of joint and extreme rapidity of muscular contrac- 
tion, show an aptitude for these exercises of progression and a facility of exe- 
cution of the movements required which no care and no culture of itself can 
ever give ; and this too without any apparent cause from shape or size of limb. 
They also show a kind of instinctive liking for these exercises, quite inexpli- 
cable, and are drawn in the direction of their practice quite involuntarily and 
irresistably. Others again with unwearied efforts never exceed mediocrity.* 

The third quality, endurance, when it is one of physical stamina, is less 
due to condition of limb than general power of body ; when of respiratory 
power it is of course due to the condition of the respiratory organs, and the 
conformation and size of the chest. 

This quality of endurance is more susceptible of improvement by judicious 
culture than either of the other two, whether the line of culture be in the 
direction of muscular or respiratory power ; its limit not being fixed abso- 
lutely, like the first quality, nor partially, like the second. 

Training exercise for feats of pedestrianism involves much cere and unwear- 
ied and unceasing application. The fundamental principal with this, as with 
all other exercises, is first to ascertain practically at the commencement of the 
training the actual capacity of the body at the special mode of exertion 
required, and then gradually, day by day, and week by week, to observe the 
parts of the body which feel the exertion most, that they may be assisted and 
strengthened by other exercises ; for the sameness of the movements and 
modes of action in one exercise will fatigue, when another mode of employ 
ment will stimulate to renewed effort and give increased vigor. 

If speed for a short distance be the object desired, this pace should be slowiy 
and gradually approached until it can be sustained over a portion of the 
course, and then, stride by stride, extended until the whole course can be 
covered within the time desired. If it be wished still to lessen the time, the 
whole attention should be given to the quickening of the step— it being 
assumed that the full length of- stride has been already acquired. Indeed 
neither rapidity nor duration should be seriously attempted until this quality 
has been cultivated and its extent determined. If the speed be satisfactory 
but not the distance, I consider it the better method first to note the distanc e 
that can be done at the pace desired, and then daily, if only stride by stride, 
extend it, rather than to cover a greater distance with a general reduction of 
speed ; inasmuch as I consider it to be less difficult to extend a course at a 
pace already acquired than to increase the speed over a longer course, which 
can only now be covered at a slower pace. But regulations of this kind must 
give way when they clash with preconceived impressions or opinions, for in 
all such matters there is an individual suitableness to be consulted, and strong 
fancies and prejudices have much readiness to establish themselves as facts. 

*I have, in my own practice, proved that endurance and velocity are essentially dif- 
ferent qualities, and that a man may have one in fair degree without the other. I have 
never been able to exceed six miles in the hour, although 1 have frequently walked 
sixty with and without knapsack, without experiencing extreme fatigue, or unfitness 
for the road next day. 

4a 



50 



APPENDIX C. 



To run a short distance, such as a hundred yards race, rapidity of step is 
probably the first quality ; as the distance increases, as in the quarter or half- 
mile races, length of stride is probably of the greatest importance, or at least 
of equal importance with rapidity ; and when the race is what is distinctly 
recognized as a long course, such as the mile or more, or combining distance 
with obstacles, such as the steeple-chase, then endurance takes the most prom- 
inent place and passes probably from muscular to respiratory effort. 

A correct action and position, quite irrespective of time, should first be 
obtained ; these should then be practiced at half speed, and ultimately at the 
highest rate of speed. 

When in addition to the proper action and position, the proper and uniform 
rate of speed has been acquired, the race may be extended to the quarter and 
whole mile. 

Long distances, such as five or ten miles, may also be practiced, with emu- 
lation, but systematically, and above all progressively, both as regards dis- 
tance and speed. There is much art in husbanding and profitably spending 
the physical resources in both modes of progression, and there is no exercise 
in which men can be engaged where fatigue so soon and so distressingly 
supervenes, if unskillfully performed. 



Fig. 1. 




SLOW TIME. SHORT DISTANCE. 

Exercise 1. The position the same as in walk- 

Course I. ing, except that the arms are bent at the 

elbows; the fore-arm held in a horizontal line, the 
hands to the front and closed, the thumbs inwards. 
(Fig. 1). 

The step also the same as in walking, except that 
the left foot is lifted before the right reaches the ground ; 
the knees are more bent than in walking, the foot is 
lifted farther from the ground, and the column of the 
body pressed more strongly to the front. 

After the slow time, in order to acquire correct action 
and position, running should be practiced as fol- 
lows :— 



Exercise 2 
Course II. 
Exercise 3. 
Course III. 
Exercise 4. 
Course IV. 



At half speed -Short distance. 

At speed Short distance. 

At speed Long distance. 



The action and position are the same in all rates of speed, except that as 
the pace increases the step is wider and the foot lifted higher on quitting the 
ground. 



Fig. 2. 



APPENDIX C. 

Fig. 3. 



51 



Fig. 4. 




Slow time. 



Half speed. 



Speed. 



LEAPING. 

Running has been characterized as a succession of leaps, because, as In the 
leap, both feet are at each step, for a space, removed from the ground ; and 
for the same reason, and in a similar sense, the leap may be viewed as a mod- 
ified step, because when preceded by the run, it forms but the terminating 
step in the course ; the whole momentum acquired by the preliminary run 
being here employed in a final effort, either on the plane of the course itself, 
or on one more or less vertical to it. 

The simplest form of leaping is the standing leap, which embraces a very 
extended series of exercises, all more or less valuable in preparing and 
strengthening the lower limbs for the more arduous modes of leaping, and 
for enabling the leaper to bring the upper limbs and the trunk itself to aid 
and assist in the effort. Of these the simple upward spring is the first ; it is 
accomplished by the flexions and extensions of the trunk and lower limbs 
combined, the first act being to depress the trunk upon the thighs, pressing 
the hips to the rear and the knees prominently to the front, while by the same 
act the heels are raised from the ground, and the whole weight of the body is 
brought upon the fore part of the foot. At the same time, and in unison 
with this combined action, the upper limbs are brought down to their full 
extent. This is as it were the bending of the bow, the compression of the 
spring. The next act is to set it free, and this is done suddenly and at once. 
The powerful extensor muscles forming the greater portion of the thigh 
and lower part of the trunk, straighten by one act every joint, the feet spurn 
the ground, and the upper limbs are forcibly elevated. 

This is the laap, and its height will be in relation to the force of the reac- 
tion from the preliminary depression. 

The foewakd, rearward, and sideward leaps are but special modes of 
employing the same force, obtained by similar if not identical means. The 
action and position of the upper limbs in these special modes of leaping, how- 



52 APPENDIX C. 

ever, are not solely for augmentation of force, but also for the preservation of 
the equilibrium of the body, and for the protection from injury when this has 
been lost. 

There is scarcely any exercise in which men improve so rapidly and to so 
great an extent as in the various modes of leaping, and there is scarcely any 
exercise which so powerfully contributes to the development of the lower 
limbs. The action is precisely that which the nature of the muscles them- 
selves demands for their healthful growth and full development, namely, rapid 
contraction and expansion, with progressive and accumulative effort ; while 
the power of concentrating the energies, of governing the action of the limbs, 
and of alighting on the spot and in the position desired, becomes, by prac- 
tice of these various forms of leaping, completely under control. 

The instructor must be careful to confine the learner to the simpler modes 
of leaping until he has acquired the power of making the limbs and trunk 
act harmoniously together, and of preserving the equilibrium of the body in 
every situation and position, When practising leaping depth, the initiatory 
practice should be at a very slight depth, gradually increasing, but never 
under any circumstances should it be increased, or its difficulty otherwise 
augmented, until the action and position is correct. In leaping height the 
learner must never be allowed to leap at a stiff barrier ; it in no way tests the 
power of the leaper better than a fragile one, or affords greater advantages in 
the practice, and there is no merit in doing anything dangerous when there is 
no equivalent to be gained for the risk undergone. Rails should be attempted 
only by well-trained and experienced leapers, for a slip of the foot may and 
does often happen with the best leapers, and such a mishap ought never to 
entail serious injury. In leaping width, over a dry ditch, for practice, the 
ditch should be shallow, and the sand or saw dust at the bottom should be 
frequently stirred or softened. It is part of the instructor's duty to see that 
the banks are firm and equal before his class begins its practice. 

Every form of leap terminates in a position of body similar to that taken 
up in the preliminary movements of the first leap, namely, in the depression 
of the trunk upon the limbs, and the bending of the joints. This is done, 
strictly speaking, neither before nor after the descent is made, but, as it were 
in detail, as the different parts of the body successively arrive ; the feet first 
with the heels raised ; the lower limbs next, with the knees bent ; the trunk 
following, pressing the hips to the rear ; the whole yielding to the encounter 
with the resisting ground, and thus dispensing the shock or concussion. 

The barrier for leaping on should be so constructed that it may be raised or 
lowered at pleasure, the top of it affording a firm resting-place for the feet. 
The barrier for leaping over should be formed of two standards about 6 feet 
high, fixed 5 or 6 feet apart. Between these a strong string, with a small flag 
in the centre, should be strained,* looped round one of the posts, and lightly 
fastened to small iron pins, fixed a distance of one inch apart, up the back of 
the other. The heights from the floor should be marked in inches up each of 
the posts. The machine for leaping depth should be a small wooden plat- 

* This, for learners and in non-competitive efforts, is preferable to the 6tick in com- 
mon use. 



APPENDIX C. 



53 



Fig. 1. 



form supported on iron brackets made to clip over the rounds of a ladder, 
vertical or inclined, the platform being raised or lowered the distance apart 
of the rounds, as required, and the ladder giving means of access to it. 

First Series Standing. 

Second Series Running. 

TO LEAP HEIGHT, IN TWO MOVEMENTS. 

PrR^T ftT^"RTTCfl 

Exercise 1 • ' Position of attention, the toes a short distance from the 

Course I. barrier (according to its height). 

1. Bring the arms upwards and forwards to their full 
extension above the head, the hands closed, again bring them 
downward to the full extension, at the same time bending 
the knees until they jut over and beyond the toes, raising 
the heels and bringing the weight of the body and down- 
ward pressure on the fore part of the foot ; repeat this move- 
ment three times, and after the third depression, spring 
from the feet, rising above and alighting on the barrier, 
resting on the fore part of the foot, the knees bent low and 
jutting over and beyond the toes, the trunk of the body 
held low and compact, and bring the arms close in by the 
sides (Fig. 1). 

2. Spring to the ground, preserving this position of body 
and extending the arms to the front. 




TO LEAP HEIGHT, IN ONE MOVEMENT. 



First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 2. 1. As in first exercise to the 

Course I. spring, except that the act of 
propulsion of tke feet should be more directed to 
the front. 

2. Clear the barrier (Fig. 2), and descend yield- 
ing. 

TO LEAP HEIGHT, ONE MOVEMENT, THE 
LEFT SIDE LEANING. 

First series. Position of attention, the bar- 

Exercise 3. rier in profile on the left, the 

Course I. distance as in first exercise. 

1. Repeat the preliminary movements, as in first 



Fig. 2. 




APPENDIX C. 



exercise, giving the arms a lateral inclination 
(towards the barrier) on their elevation. 

2. Spring from the feet in the same direction, 
clearing the barrier (Fig. 3.), and descend yielding, 
(the barrier on the right). 

This exercise to be repeated with the right side 
leading. 

TO LEAP WIDTH. 
First Series. Position of attention, the toes 

Exercise 4. at the edge of the mark. 

Course I. 1. Bring the arms slowly up- 

ward and forward to the line of the shoulder, the 
hands closed (Fig. 4.); bring them again downward 
and rearward to their full extension, at the same 
.L \ time depressing the lower limbs as in first exercise •, 

repeat these movements three times. 
2. Spring from the feet with the entire force of 
propulsion of the lower limbs and at the same instant throw the upper limbs 
to the front (Fig. 5.) ; descend yielding, but let the entire sole of the foot 
meet the ground. 

Fig. 4. Fig. 5. 






TO LEAP HEIGHT AND WIDTH COMBINED. 



First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 5. \. As in first exercise. 

Course I. 2. Spring from the feet, as in first exercise, clear the 

barrier and the space beyond ; descend yielding. 

If the barrier be the first part of the obstacle, throw the arms and incline 
the body to the front, on clearing it ; if the second part, bend the back 
inwards on clearing it, and throw the hands to the extention of the arms, to 
the front upwards ; descend yielding. 



APPENDIX C. 

TO LEAP WIDTH, TO THE REAR. 



65 



First Series. 
Exercise 6. 
Course II. 



Position of atten- 
tion, the heels at the 
edge of the mark. 

1. The preliminary movements as in 
first exercise, except that the downward 
extension of the arms should be carried 
farther to the rear. 

2. Spring from the feet, throwing the 
arms energetically to the rear (Fig. 6), the 
hands open, the palms upwards ; descend 
yielding. 

As soon as the feet meet the ground, 
bring the hands down by the sides, the 
palms downwards and to the front. 



Fig. 6. 




TO LEAP WIDTH, SIDEWAYS. 

First Series. Position of attention, the mark in profile on the right, 

Exercise 7. the edge of the right foot touching it. 

Course II. i # Slightly bend the knees, letting them jut over, but 

not beyond the toes ; swing the arms upwards and across the body in front ; 
on the return of the third swing or oscillation to the left, bend the knees 
steadily downward, the right lower than the left, raising the heels and resting 
on the fore part of the feet. Fig. 7. 



2. As the hands attain the culminat- 
ing point, throw them rapidly and en- 
ergetically to the right ; at the same 
time spring from the feet with their 
entire concentrated force of propulsion 
(Fig. 7), and descend yielding. 

This exercise to be repeated on the 
left. 




TO LEAP DEPTH. 

First Series. Position of attention, the toes at the edge of the plat- 

Exercise 8 . form or ditch. 

CpuRSE II. l. Bend the knees until they jut over the toes, and 



56 



APPENDIX C. 



Fig. 8. 



Fig. 9. 




above the space, raising the heels, &&d 
resting on the fore part of the foe*; 
during the depression of the lower 
limbs extend the arms by the sides, the 
hands lightly closed, the column of 
the body inclined to the front, but held 
close and compact (Fig. 8). 

2. Press lightly from the feet, and 
spring to the front with sufficient foree 
only to bring the back clear of the 
edge of the platform or ditch, extend 
the arms to the front (Fig. 9), and de- 
scend yielding. 

TO LEAP DEPTH, TO THE REAR. 

Fikst Series. Position of atten- 

Exercise 9. tion, the heels at the 

Course III. edge of the plat- 
form or ditch. 



Fig. 10. 




1. The preliminary movement as in sixth 
exercise. 

2. Spring lightly to the rear, throwing the 
hands forwards to the full extension of the 
arms (Fig. 10), and descend yielding. 

If the equilibrium be lost, and the body 
fall to the front, extend the arms as in pre- 
ceding exercise ; if to the rear, as in sixth ex- 
ercise, Fig. G. 



TO LEAP WIDTH AND DEPTH COMBINED, TO THE FRONT. 



First Series. Position of attention, the toes at the edge of the plat- 

Exercise 10- form or ditch. 

Course III. 1. (Look steadily at the spot desired to be reached.) 

The preliminary movements as in eighth exercise. 

2. Spring from the feet, and at the same instant throw the hands upward 
and forwards (Fig. 11), clear the space, and descend yielding (Fig. 12). 



APPENDIX C. 

Fig. 12. 



57 




TO LEAP WIDTH AND DEPTH COMBINED, TO THE REAR. 



First Sekies. 
Exercise XX, 
Course IV. 
sixth exercise. 

2. Spring from 
same time throw 
rear, open, with the palms down- 
wards, and descend yielding. 

A SECOND METHOD. 
First Series. Position as in 

Exercise 12. ninth exercise. 

Course IV. i. Stoop down 

and grasp the ledge of the platform 
with both hands, the fingers and 
thumbs meeting, the fingers above 
(Fig. 13); if at the edge of a ditch, 
the fingers and thumbs together, 
the palms on its surface. 

2. Spring from the feet, shoot- 
ing them out to the rear, and at the 
same instant press strongly from the 
hands (Fig. 14); retain them in the 
front, the palms open, and descend 
yielding. 



Position as in ninth exercise. 

1. (Glance to the rear and determine on the spot to be 
reached in the leap.) The preliminary movements as in 

Fig. 13. Fig. 14. 

the feet, at the 
the hands to the 




58 



APPENDIX C. 



Fig. 15. 




Fig. 16. 




\ 



TO LEAP WIDTH AND DEPTH 

COMBINED, SIDEWAYS. 

Fibst Series. Position of atten- 

Exercise 13. tion, the ditch or 

Course IV. f ron t edge of plat- 

form in profile on the right. 

1. The preliminary movements as in 
seventh exercise. 

2. Spring from the feet, throwing 
the hands to the left front (Fig. 15), 
descend yielding. 

This exercise to be repeated, the 
right side leading. 



TO LEAP HEIGHT, TWO MOVEMENTS. 
Second Series. Position of attention, twenty or thirty 
Exercise 14. paces from the barrier. 

Course I. j Begin the preliminary run, with 

short, well-measured steps, quickening the pace on the 
advance, and when within a few feet of the barrier (accord* 
ing to its height), spring from the foot making the last step,, 
bring both knees close up in front, the hands being elevated 
at the instant of the spring as in first exercise, and alight 
upon the barrier, bringing the hands instantly down by the 
sides (Fig. 16). 
2. Descend as in first exercise. 

TO LEAP HEIGHT, ONE MOVEMENT. 
Second Series. Position as in fourteenth exercise. 
Exercise 15. 1. As in preceding exercise to the spring, 



Fig. 17. Course I. 




clear the barrier (Fig. 17), and descend 
yielding. 

TO LEAP HEIGHT, ONE MOVEMENT, THE 
LEFT SIDE LEADING. 

Second Series. Position as in fourteenth ex- 

Exercise 16* ercise. 

Course I. 1. The preliminary run as in 

fourteenth exercise; swerve slightly to the left 
in the last few steps, inclining the left shoulder 
forward, spring from the left foot, clear the barrier 
(Fig. 18), the left foot leading to the ground, and 
descend yielding, the barrier on the right. 

This exercise to be repeated with the right side 
leading. 



APPENDIX C. 



59 



TO LEAP WIDTH. 

Second Seeies. Position as in fourteenth exercise. 
Exercise 17. 1. The preliminary run as in 
Course I. fourteenth exercise, spring from 

the foot making the last step, the whole act of pro- 
pulsion of the spring and the momentum acquired 
in the run being directed to the front, the lower 
limbs closely bent up, the trunk of the body compact 
and firm, the hands closed and thrown to the front, 
as in Fig. 4 ; descend yielding, resting on the entire 
sole of the foot. 

TO LEAP HEIGHT AND WIDTH COMBINED. 

Second Series. Position as in fourteenth exercise. 

Exercise 18. 1. The preliminary run as in 

Course III. fourteenth exercise : the spring as 

in fourteenth exercise ; the effort should be to divide the momentum of the 

run and that given by the propulsion of the spring, so that the obstacle in 

both aspects, height and width, shall be cleared ; descend yielding. 




THE LEAPING ROPE. 

The exercises with the leaping rope, and also those with the leaping pole, 
differ in certain features from all other modes of leaping ; they employ a ma- 
chine to aid the leaper in clearing the barrier, and they give employment to 
both the upper and the lower limbs, thus forming the connecting link between 
leaping and vaulting. The practice of these exercises is very good in an ele- 
mentary sense, giving much action in a beneficial form to the trunk as well as 
to the limbs. 

This machine is a strong rope suspended from a tie-beam or other point of 
attachment, over the center of the string and posts already described for leap- 
ing height. It should reach within four feet of the ground, 

SINGLE SERIES. 



TO LEAP HEIGHT. 

Single Series. Position of attention in front of the barrier. 

Exercise 1. 1. Eaise both hands to the reach and grasp the rope, 

Course I. passing the end of it over the shoulder (Fig. 1); spring 

from the feet (slightly to the rear), bringing the lower limbs straight up in 
front of the face, letting the head and shoulders incline to the rear (Fig. 2); 
clear the barrier, bending the back inwards, and shooting the feet to the 
front ; the legs straight and together (Fig. 3) ; bring the head and shoulders 
to the front, quit the grasp of the hands, and descend yielding. 



60 



APPENDIX C. 

Fig. 3. Fig. 2. 



Fig.l. 




HAND OVER HAND. 

Single Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 2. Raise the right hand to the reach, spring from the feet 

Course II. and bring the lower limbs up in front as in first exercise ; 

during their rise, pass the left hand over the right, and again the right over 
the left, clear the barrier as in first exercise, and descend yielding. 

This method to be used when the barrier is too high to be cleared as directed 
in first exercise. 



TO LEAP WIDTH. 

Single Series. Grasp the end of the rope with the left hand and step 

Exercise 3. to the rear until the arm is at the reach, make a half face 

Course I. to the right, and take a short step to the front witb the 

left foot, the knees slightly bent,, the right arm extended by the side, the palm 
open, and to the front, the fingers pointed to the ground (Fig. 4.) 

1. Lift the left foot from the ground, throwing the weight of the body to 
the rear, press strongly from the right foot, spring from the ground back- 



APPENDIX C 



61 



Fig. 4. 



Fig. 5 




wards, rapidly placing the feet together and swinging them to their furthest 
rearward point, the legs straight and together, the toes pointed, at the same 
time turning the body to the front, the arms bent at the half-reach, the head 
bent back (Fig. 5) ; begin the forward swing, bringing the lower limbs to the 
front and letting them rise as high as the handt (Fig. 6) ; when approaching 
Fig. 6. Fig. 7 




the terminating point of the swing, lower the feet, quit the grasp of the hands, 
incline the head and shoulders to the front (Fig. 7), and descend yielding. 

THE DOUBLE SWING. 
Single Series. Position as in third exercise. 

Exerci** 4 1. As in third exercise to the terminating point of the 

Course III. forward swing ; instead of quitting the grasp, advance 

the risht shoulder, wheel round, bringing the back upwards, throw the lower 
limbs hitrh and free to the rear (thereby greatly increasing the momentum), 



tW APPENDIX C. 

begin the return swing, bringing the feet to the front as in the first swing ; at 
its culminating point, advance the left shoulder, wheel around to the front, 
lower the feet, quit the grasp, inclining the body forward, and descend 
yielding. 

THE LEAPING POLE. 

The exercises with the leaping pole may almost be viewed as belonging to 
recreative rather than systematized exercise, being essentially for the open 
air, and among the few which may be left for free practice after the learner 
has acquired a knowledge of the action and position of the different exercises. 
They are valuable as giving precision to the eye and hand, the power of calcu- 
lating distance, and of rapidly determining the moment for executing a com- 
plicated movement, with the presence of mind to execute it, in addition to the 
physical exercise of the run and leap, the balance and descent. 

The leaping pole should be of ash, about If inches in diameter, and from 
eight feet to ten feet long, perfectly smooth, and shod with iron at the butt or 

lower end. 

First Series Standing. 

Second Series Running. 

TO LEAP WIDTH. 
First Series. Position of attention, one pace from the mark, with the 

Exercise 1 • pole at the balance, i. e. held horizontally across the body 

Course I. with the arms bent, the butt of the pole held slanting to the 

front, the hands at the distance, the right hand to the front, the palms of the 
hands upwards, the fingers and thumbs meeting; or with the palms of 
the right hand downwards. 

1. Advance the right foot to the edge of the mark, advance the butt of the 
pole to the utmost reach, and fix it on the ground without displacing the feet 
or changing the grasp of the hands (Fig. 1). 

Fig. 1. Fig. 2. 




APPENDIX C. 63 

2. Spring from the feet, and pass by the left of the pole, the whole body 
with the lower limbs straight and extended in one line when passing the pole 
{Fig. 2); descend yielding, and as the feet meet the ground raise the pole to 
the balance. 

This exercise to be repeated, advancing the left foot to the mark, the left 
hand to the front, and passing by the right of the pole. 



TO LEAP HEIGHT. 

First Series. Position as in first exer- 

Exercise 2. cise, a short distance from 

Course II. the barrier (in proportion 

to its height. 

1. As in first exercise, advancing the butt 
of the pole to within a few feet of the barrie r 
(according to its height). 

2. Spring from the feet and clear the bar- 
rier, passing by the left of the pole, the body 
in position as in first exercise when clearing 
the barrier (Fig. 3); after clearing the barrier 
quit the grasp of the pole, throwing i t back 
to the starting point, and descend yielding, 
facing the barrier. 

This exercise to be repeated, advancing the 
left foot, the left hand to the front, and pass- 
ing by the right of the pole. 



Fig. 3. 




TO LEAP DEPTH. 



First Series. Position 
Exercise 3. as in first 
Course III. exercise, 
the toes at the edge of the 
platform or ditch. 

1. Advance the pole 
and firmly plant the butt 
on the ground. 

2. Press lightly from 
the feet, quit the platform 
or ground, passing by the 
right of the pole, the trunk 
of the boc^y in the line of 
the pole when passing it, 
the lower limbs at a right 
angle with it, the toes 
pointed to the front; con- 
tinue the descent (Fig. 
4), and when nearing the 



Fig. 4. 




64 APPENDIX C. 

ground quit the grasp of the pole, throw it slightly to the left, and descend 
yielding. 
This exercise to be repeated, passing by the left of the pole. 

TO LEAP WIDTH. 

Second Series. Position of attention twenty or thirty paces from the 
Exercise 4. edge of the ditch, the pole at the balance, the right hand 

Course II. to the front. 

1. Begin the advance with a short, light, and well-measured step, fixing 
the eye on the ditch, and reagrding it steadily, quicken the pace when nearing 
it, select the spot and plant the pole without halt, springing by the left, the 
position of body and lower limbs as in first exercise ; descend yielding, bring- 
ing the pole to the balance. 

This exercise to be repeated, advancing the left foot, passing by the right 
of the pole, the left hand to the front. 

TO LEAP HEIGHT. 

Second Series; Position as in fourth exercise. 

Exercise 5. 1. As in fourth exercise to the spring ; clear the barrier 

Course III. as in first exercise, quit the grasp of the pole at the com- 

mencement of the descent, letting it fall to the rear without touching the bar- 
rier, and descend yielding, facing the barrier. 

This exercise to be repeated, advancing the left foot, the left hand to the 
front, and passing by the right of the pole. 



THE HORIZONTAL BEAM. 

The exercises on this machine follow in natural order the preceding simple 
exercises of progression. They do but carry such exercises one step farther, 
by increasing the difficulties of their execution. 

In reality the physical difficulty of walking on a beam raised a foot above 
the floor is no greater than that of walking on one of the planks of the floor 
itself, provided the former is as firm as the latter, and its surface as level and 
secure to the foot ; and to walk on a beam a hundred feet above the ground is 
physically no more difficult than either. Therefore the difficulty to be over- 
come in walking along an elevated beam presenting a surface sufficiently 
broad to admit of the complete placing of the foot, and free from all oscilla- 
tion and vibration, is entirely mental, arising, it may be, from many and 
conflicting causes, in which actual fear has no share. It is most important 
that both instructor and learner should be aware of this, because from the lat. 
ter it will remove an imaginary difficulty, while the former will, from it, see the 
propriety and necessity of patience and forbearance with the defects of begin- 
ners in the simplest exercises on this essentially rudimentary machine. The 
preservation of the equilibrium is the very essence of these exercises, and the 
acquirement of the power of maintaining it under difficulties is their avowed 
purpose and object. 



APPENDIX C. 



65 



The first series, sitting, is of the simplest description, and, as shown in the 
note introductory to the section, its exercises are executed in the position in 
which the equilibrium is maintained with the least effort. 

The second series, walking upright, is of much greater difficulty than the 
first, but is still composed of exercises of a simple character. 

Other exercises, such as the second series on the horizontal bar, and the sec- 
ond and third series on the slanting pole, may also be performed on the beam, 
but they properly belong to the machines in connection with which they are 
described. 

The instructor should walk by the side of the learner, to explain the action 
and position of the different exercises, and to give assistance when required. 

This machine is a round wooden beam, not less than 25 feet long, 9 or 10 
inches in diameter at one end, and 6 or 7 inches at the other, made to move 
up and down between standards, and supported on iron pins running through 
them. 

First Series Sitting. 

Second Series Upright. 

Third Series Changes of Position. 

THE FRONT MARCH. 
(the beam low.) 
Position of attention facing the beam. 
1. Place the hands on the beam at the distance, the 
thumbs and fingers straight and together, and pointed to 
the front ; incline the head and shoulders to the front, lean strongly upon the 
hands, pass the right leg over by the rear, and come to the seat astride of the 
beam, placing the hands upon the thighs (Fig. 1), the head erect, the breast 
advanced, the column of the body upright, the legs pendent on either side of 
the beam. 

Fig. 1. Fig. 2. Fig. 3. 



First Series 
Exercise 1. 
Course I. 




2. Incline the head and trunk to the front, advance the hands (Fig. 2), rest 
upon them, lift the body from the beam, and bring it up again to the hands, 
extending the lower limbs to the front, the toes pointed to the front (Fig. 3). 
Repeat. 

5a 



APPENDIX C. 



In descending, pass the right leg by the rear over to the left, press lightly 
from the hands and descend yielding. 

THE REAR MARCH. 

Fibst Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 2 1. As in first exercise, except that the left leg is passed 

Course II. by the rear over the beam. 

2 Rest on the hands, elevate the feet in front nearly as high as the beam 
(Fig. 3), throw them to the rear to the reach of the arms, resting on the inner 
side of the thighs, the body lying inclined to the front (Fig. 2), bring both 
hands up to the thighs. Repeat. 
Descend as in first exercise, passing the left leg by the rear over the beam. 
THE SIDE MARCH. 
First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 3- 1. Come to the seat astride of the beam, as in first exer- 

Course I. cise ; pass the left hand to the rear, pass the right leg by 

the front over to the left side (Fig. 4). 
Fig. 4. Fig. 5. 

2 Advance the left hand 
along the beam to the reach, 
inclining the body in the same 
direction (Fig. 5), lift the 
body up close to the left 
hand, preserving the balance, 
bring the right hand up to the 
body. Repeat. 

In descending, press lightly 
from the hands, shoot out the 
lower limbs to the front, and 
descend yielding. 

THE FRONT MARCH, HANDS ONLY. 

Ylg. 6. First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 4. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course II. 2. Rest upon the hands, ris- 

ing from the seat, the lower limbs pendent, the toes 
pointed downward (Fig. 6), incline the body to the 
right front, advance the left hand, incline the body 
left front, advance the right hand beyond the left. 
Repeat. 
Descend as in first exercise. 

THE FRONT MARCH, BOTH HANDS AT 
ONCE. 

Position as in first exercise. 

1. As in first exercise. 

2. Rest upon the hands as in preceding exercise, Fig. 6, 





First Series. 
Exercise 5. 
Course II. 



APPENDIX C. 



67 



spring to the front with both hands, inclining the body to the front, the lowe r 
limbs compact, but free. Repeat. 
Descend as in first exercise. 

THE REAR MARCH, BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

Fikst Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 6. 1. As in second exercise. 

Course II. 2. Rest upon the hands, spring to the rear with both 

hands, inclining the body slightly to the front. Repeat. 
Descend as in second exercise. 

THE FRONT MARCH, THE LEFT FOOT LEADING. 

(the beam high.) 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 7- : 1. Raise the hands and place them on the beam as in 

Course I. fi rs t exercise, bend the knees, and on the return extension, 

spring from the ground, press strongly with the hands, extend the arms, and 
raise the trunk of the body above the beam, the legs straight and together, 
the feet together, and pointed to the ground (Fig. 7) ; pass the right leg over 
by the rear, and come to the seat astride of the beam, as in first exercise, Fig. 
1 ; replace the hands, extend the lower limbs to the front (Fig. 8), incline the 
body forward, rest on the hands, sweep the feet by the rear, bending the legs, 
and place the toes on the beam, close behind the hands (Fig. 8) ; straighten 



Fig. 7. 



Fig. 8. 



Fig. 9. 




the legs, rising from the rest on the palms to the tips of the fingers, rest 
•entirely on the feet, and rise upright. 



68 



APPENDIX C. 




Fig. 11. 2. Make a half-face to the 

right, bringing the heel of the 
left foot into the hollow of the 
right, the left foot pointed 
straight along § the beam, the 
right directly across the beam 
(Fig. 10), the rest of the body in 
the position of attention. 

3. Advance the left foot a 
pace along the beam (Fig. 11), 
incline the body to the front 
over the advanced foot, and 
bring up the hollow of the right 
foot again to the heel of the left, 
the upper part of the body and 
the arms remaining throughout in the position of attention. Repeat. 

On descending come to the front, bend the knees, keeping the feet on the 
beam, advance the hands, the palms downwards, the fingers to the front, 
place them on the beam in front of the feet, as in the ascent (Fig. 9), rest on 
the hands, lift and separate the feet, and sink to the seat on the beam ; com- 
plete the descent as in first exercise 
This exercise to be repeated with the right foot leading. 

THE FRONT MARCH, RIGHT AND LEFT. 
Second Sebies. Position as in first exercise. 
Exercise 8. 1. As in seventh exercise. 

Course I. g # Advance the left foot a pace along the beam, the 

toes pointed slightly outwards, incline the body to the front over the advanced 
foot, bring the right foot to the front and place it on the beam in advance of 
the left, the body as in preceding exercise. Repeat. 
Descend as in seventh exercise. 

THE SIDE MARCH. 
Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 
Exercise 9. 1. As in seventh exercise. 

Course II. g p ace t0 tne right, bringing 

both feet across the beam, and resting on the hollow of 
the foot (Fig. 12) ; advance the left foot a short step 
along the beam, incline the body to the left over the 
foot, bring up the right foot close to the left. Repeat. 
The trunk of the body and the arms remaining in the 
position of attention throughout. 

Face to the front and descend as in seventh exercise. 

This exercise to be repeated with the right foot leading. 

THE REAR MARCH, THE LEFT FOOT LEADING. 
Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exereise 10. 1. As in seventh exercise, to the 

Course II. upright position on the beam, except 



Fig. 12. 




APPENDIX C. 



69 



that the left leg is passed over the beam, bringing the back to the line of 
march. 

2. Make a half -lace to the left, bringing the heel of the right foot into the 
hollow of the left, the right foot pointed straight along the beam, the left 
•directly across the beam, the rest of the body in position. 

3. Rest on the right foot, pass the left a step to the rear, rest on the left 
foot i and bring the right, foot again up to the left. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the right foot leading. 

THE REAR MARCH, RIGHT AND LEFT. 
Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Uxercise 11. 1. As in preceding exercise. 

Course II. 2. Rest on the right foot, pass the left a step to the 

rear, the toes first meeting the beam, the heel following ; rest on the left foot 
and pass the right a step to the rear. Repeat. 

TO MARCH TO THE FRONT, ONE FOOT ON THE BEAM. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 12. t. As in seventh exercise. 

Course III. 2. Bend the knees until they jut over the toes, inclin- 

ing the body forward, and resting on the toes, the arms remaining extended 
by the sides, remove the left foot from the beam, let the leg fall straight by 
the side of the beam, slightly to the rear, the toes pointed to the ground (Fig. 
13) ; elevate the left leg to the front by the side of the beam, retaining it 
straight throughout, and place the heel upon the beam, a full step in advance 
of the right (Fig. 14), incline the body forward, bringing the toes of the left 
foot upon the beam, bend the left knee, the heel rising as the body advances, 
let the right leg gradually straighten until the instep rests upon the beam (Fig. 
15), incline the head and shoulders to the front, let the right leg fall straight 
by the side of the beam and complete the step as with the left. Repeat. 

Fig. 13. Fig. 14. Fig. 15. 




This exercise to be repeated backwards, reversing the movement. 



70 



APPENDIX C. 



TO CHANGE FRONT. 



Third Series. 
Exercise 13. 
Course III. 



From the front march sitting, Exercise 1, First Series. 
From the rear march sitting, Exercise 2, First Series. 
From the front march, hands only, Exercise 4, First 

Series. 
From the front march, both hands at once, Exercise 5, 

First Series. 
From the rear march, both hands at once, Exercise 6, 

First Series. 

1. Complete the step, placing the hands on the thighs. 

2. Pass the right leg over the beam by the front, placing it beside the left ; 
change the seat, pass the left over the beam, turning to the left, adjust the 
seat, coming square to the front. 

A SECOND METHOD. 
Third Series. 1, Complete the step, placing the hands upon the 

Exercise 14, thighs. 

Course III. 2. Pass the right leg over the beam by the rear, at the 

same time changing the position of the left hand, throw the left leg over the 
beam, at the same time bringing the right hand opposite the left, and come 
square to the front. 

TO CHANGE POSITION. 



Third Series, 
Exercise 15. 
Course III. 



From the front march, left foot leading, Exercise 7, Sec- 
ond Series. 

From the front march, right and left, Exercise 8, Second 
Series. 

From the rear march, left foot leading, Exercise 10, Sec- 
ond Series. 

From the rear march, right and left, Exercise 11, Sec- 
ond Series. 

1. Complete the step. 

2. Descend to the beam as in the seventh exercise, placing the hands upon 
the thighs. 

3. Replace the hands upon the beam, extend the lower limbs to the front 
as in Fig. 8, incline the body to the front, rest on the hands, and re-ascend as 
In seventh exercise, Fig. 9. 

Fig. 16. 

TO REST ON THE BEAM. . 

Third Series. From the same exercises (Nos. 7, 

Exercise 16. 8, 10, 11, Second Series.) 

Course III. 1. Complete the step. 

2. Descend to the beam as in seventh exercise. 

3. Incline to the* front, pass the right leg over the 
beam by the rear, turning the body to the right, lean 
forward, rest upon the waist on the beam, let the arms 
fall pendent over the beam (Fig. 16), the legs together 







APPENDIX C. 



71 



and straight, the toes pointed to the ground. 
4. Reverse the order of the movements on rising 
from the rest. 



Fig. 17. 



TO PASS UPON THE BEAM. 

(two men meeting.) 

Third Series. From exercises (Nos. 7, 8, Sec- 

Exercise 17. ond Series). 

Course III. i. Complete the step. 

2. Let the first man come to the rest across the 
beam, as in preceding exercise, and the second then 
resume the march, passing the foot clearly over and 
beyond the trunk of the first man (Fig. 17), who 
will then rise as in preceding exercise and resume 
the march. 

A SECOND METHOD. 

Third Series. From the same exercises (Nos. 7, 8, Second Series). 

Exercise 18. 1. Let each man advance the right foot, place them to- 

Course III. gether, the toes slightly turned outwards, then let each ad- 

vance the right hand, and clasp the outside of the other's left arm near the 
shoulder, advance the left hand, and with the palm press against the other's 
right side, under the arm (Fig. 18); let each slowly incline to the front, rest- 
ing on the right foot; remove the left foot from the beam, swing the leg round 
to the front (the body turning), and place it on the beam a short distance in 
advance of the right, making- a complete turn with the body during the move- 
Fig. 18. Fig. 19. 





T4 



APPENDIX C. 



Fig. 20. 



ment, and coming face to face (Fig. 19), giving and receiving support; let 
each lightly remove the hands, resume the front, and complete the march. 
TO DESCEND FROM THE BEAM. 

Third Series. (From the seat astride of 

Exercise 19. the beam, when the beam 

Course III. is raised.) 

1. Lean forward until the breast 
touches the beam, passing both hands 
under the beam and taking the inter- 
grasp beneath, pass both legs around the 
beam, and cross the ankles, the right in front 
of the left ; slowly incline to the right, and 
let the body pass under the beam, the hands 
and feet ascending to the surface, as the 
trunk descends beneath it (Fig. 20), untwine 
the feet, and lower them to the vertical line, 
quit the grasp, and descend yielding. 

TO RE-ASCEND THE BEAM. 




Fig. 21. 



Third Series. (From the position under 

Exercise 20. the beam of preceding exer- 
Course IV. cise, Fig. 20.) 

1. Slowly detach the hands from their inter- 
grasp above the beam, taking instead a strong 
clasp with the open palm, slowly relinquish the 
clasp of the left, and rapidly pass it under the 
beam by the front to the right side, at the same 
time swinging the left leg under the beam with 
sufficient force to raise the head and shoulders 
above the beam on the same side ; hold strongly 
by the clasp of the hands, pass the right leg over 

the beam until the thigh is on its surface, bring the left arm on the surface of 

beam (Fig. 21), elevate the trunk, and rise, seated on the beam. 
All the exercises on the under side of the slanting pole may be executed on 

the beam, advancing the whole hand as far as the wrist, on its surface. 
Also, the exercises in rising above the horizontal bar, the open clasp of the 

palm being substituted for the grasp of the closed hand. 




THE VAULTING BAR. 

Nothing could more distinctly show the nature and importance of progress- 
ive exercise than the apparatus of this section, each succeeding machine pre- 
senting in a more difficult form the exercises of its predecessor. Thus, as run- 
ning naturally followed walking, and leaping followed the race at speed, so the 
modified leap with the rope and pole is introductory to vaulting, where, from 
playing a secondary part, the upper limbs pass to one of equal importance 
with the lower ones. 

The bar, of which the girth will admit of its being grasped by the hand, and 



APPENDIX C. 



73 



which can be elevated and depressed to suit the capacity of the learner, is the 
most simple form of the vaulting machine ; and as will be seen by the descrip- 
tion in the text of the action and position preparatory to the rise, it is similar 
to the first standing leap ; with this distinguishing difference, that the hands 
grasp the barrier, and the upper limbs take up the effort after the lower limbs 
have completed the spring. 

In the first form of vaulting the body is carried over the barrier in a hori- 
zontal line, being from head to foot, when above the bar, in the exact line of 
the bar itself. In the second form, the lower half of the body is lifted by the 
action of the loins, elongated and elevated vertically above the hands, and 
thrown straight to the front. A third form which unites in some degree both 
of these, is when the body from the vertical position above the bar is thrown 
to the right or left front according to the side on which the vault is to be 
made. All these forms of vaulting require special care on the part of the in- 
structor, who should impress upon the learner at every opportunity the neces- 
sity for keeping the lower limbs in position and close together. 

The position of the instructor should be in front of the learner, with one 
hand grasping the wrist nearest to him, and the other held in readiness to give 
assistance, if required. 

The vaulting bar should be of ash (specially selected for its straightness and 
freedom from knots), turned perfectly round, 3£ inches in diameter, except at 
the ends, where square shoulders or 'tenons' should be formed, to run up and 
down the grooves or space between the standards. The standards should be 
seven feet apart and seven feet high, formed in two pieces with a space of If 
inches between them to receive the shoulders at the ends of the bar, and 
pierced with holes three inches apart, fitted with moveable wrought iron pint 
for the bar to rest on. Where it is desired to have the bar of less diameters 
it should be bored throughout its .length, and a steel rod or ' core/ specially 
tempered, inserted, terminating at each end in a brass cap, fitting the shoul- 
der of the bar. 

SINGLE SERIES. 

TO VAULT OYER THE BAR IN THREE MOVEMENTS. 



Single Series. Position of at- 
Exercise 1. tention, facing the 

Course I. bar, close to it. 

1. Raise the hands and grasp the 
bar ; the hands at the distance, the 
fingers and thumbs meeting ; lift 
the feet from the ground, press 
strongly with the hands, rising to 
the full extension of the arms and 
inclining the body slightly forward 
during its ascent ; the head erect, 
the column of the body upright, the 
legs straight and together, the feet 
together, the toes pointed to the 
ground (Fig. 1). 

2. Raise the right leg, retaining 



Fig. 1. 




74 



APPENDIX C. 




Fig. 3. 




its extension, and place the foot upon the bar, the hollow of the foot resting 1 , 
on it (Fig. 2). 

3. Raise the left leg, and bring the left foot up to the right, clear the bar,, 
the whole column of the body and the lower limbs in one horizontal line over 
it, the arms bent, the chest turned towards the bar (Fig. 3, ) quit the grasps 
and descend yielding, facing the bar opposite the point grasped by the hands. 

This exercise to be repeated on the left. 

TO VAULT OVER THE BAR IN TWO MOVEMENTS, 

Single Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 2 1. As in first exercise. 

Course II. 2. Lean forward across the bar, press the lower limbs 

to the front under the bar, and as they return to the rear throw them to the 
right, clear the bar, as in preceding exercise (Fig. 3), quit the grasp of the. 
hands, and descend yielding, facing the bar. 
This exercise to be repeated on the left. 

TO VAULT OVER THE BAR IN ONE MOVEMENT. 



Single Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 3. 1. Raise both hands and grasp the bar as in first exercise,. 

Course II press from both hands and feet simultaneously, throw both: 

feet with the lower limbs in position to the right, clear the bar, the trunk and 
lower limbs in the position of the first exercise (Fig. 2), quit the grasp, and 
descend yielding. 

During this exercise the body should make a complete turn, the feet describ 
ing a semicircle diagonally, the chest at each point of the ascent and descent 
being continually turned towards the bar, the position of the body on the 
completion of the descent being as distinctly facing the bar as it was prepar- 
atory to the ascent. 

This exercise to be repeated on the left. 



APPENDIX C. 



75> 




TO VAULT OVER THE BAR BY THE BACK LIFT. 

Single Series. Position as in 

Exercise 4. first exercise. 

Course III. 1. Raise both 

hands and grasp the bar, as in first ex- 
ercise ; press strongly with the hands 
and feet simultaneously, and throw the 
body over the bar in a straight line ver- 
tically above the head, the arms bend- 
ing during its ascent, the elbows held 
close in by the sides, the head and 
shoulders inclined to the front, the col- 
umn of the body and the lower limbs, 
with the toes pointed upward, in a ver- 
tical line when above the bar (Fig. 4); 
from this point, throw the feet to the 
front, bending the back inwards, and 
raising the head as the feet approach 
the ground, quit the grasp (Fig. 5), and 
descend yielding, the back to the bar. 



TO VAULT OVER THE BAR BY THE BACK LIFT, EST TWO MOVE- 

MENTS. 
Single Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 5. 1. As in first exercise (Fig. 1). 

Course HI. 2. Press the lower limbs to the front, as in second ex- 

ercise, and as they return to the rear, throw them straight above the head as 
in fourth exercise (Fig. 4), the arms bending during the ascent ; clear the bar 
and descend as in fourth exercise. 

TO VAULT THE BAR OVER ONE HAND. 
Single Series. Position as in 

Exercise 6- first exercise. 

Course IV 1. As in fourth 

exercise, but during the elevation of 
the lower limbs above the bar, in- 
stead of retaining the body between 
the hands, incline it over the right 
arm, the trunk and lower limbs 
turning towards the right; com- 
plete the elevation of the lower 
limbs until they rise straight above 
the bar over the grasp of the right 
hand, quit the grasp of the left, and 
pass it above the head; let the feet 
descend (Fig. 6), the right side next 
the bar, quit the grasp of the right 
hand, and descend yielding. 
This exercise to be repeated over the left hand. 



Fig. 6. 




76 APPENDIX C. 

TO VAULT THE BAR WITH THE HANDS ONLY. 

Single Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 7- 1. Spring up and grasp the bar with both hands, as in 

Course IV. first exercise, and in lifting the feet from the ground 

press them to the front under the bar ; on their return oscillation, rapidly 
bend the arms, until the breast rises above the bar, press strongly with the 
hands, continue the upward movement of the body, and at the same time 
throw the lower limbs in position to the right, clear the bar, and descend 
yielding. 
This exereise to be repeated on the left. 

TO VAULT THE BAR WITH THE HANDS ONLY BY THE BACK 

LIFT. 

Single Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 8. . 1. As in preceding exercise until the breast rises above 
Course IV. the bar, at this point press the elbows close in by the 

sides, incline the head and shoulders to the front, elevate, the lower limbs ver- 
tically above the head as in fourth exercise (Fig. 4), and descend yielding 
(Fig. 5). 

TO VAULT THE BAR WITH THE HANDS ONLY, OVER ONE HAND. 

Single Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 9. l. As in preceding exercise, but during the elevation of 

Course IV. the lower limbs above the bar, incline the body over the 

right arm, complete the elevation of the lower limbs, and the descent as in 
sixth exercise (Fig. 6). 
This exercise to be repeated over the left hand. 

TO VAULT THE BAR WITH ONE HAND. 

Fig. 7. Single Series. Position of attention 

Exercise 1 0. facing the bar, the bar on 

Course IV. the left. 

1. Grasp the bar strongly with the left 
hand, slightly bend the lower limbs, and on 
their return extension, spring from the ground, 
incline the body strongly over the right arm, 
rapidly elevate the left hand above the head, 
and pass the lower limbs, straight and 
together, over the bar (Fig. 7), quit the grasp, 
and descend yielding, facing the bar. 




THE VAULTING HORSE. 

This is a machine of much higher order than the bar, and presenting a 
much wider range of exercises, second to none in value and number. 



APPENDIX C. 



7? 



The three series into which the exercises divide themselves are very dis- 
tinctly marked, and admit of progressive practice long after the correct action 
and position have been attained, by increasing the elevation of the machine. 

These exercises can scarcely be too frequently practiced, as they give valu- 
able and widely varied employment to both upper and lower limbs, and also to 
the trunk ; and this machine is always found an excellent one with which to 
begin the lesson, because it affords much and rapid movement without severe 
or localized effort. The first series is clearly introductory to the second. 
The third series is very artistic and effective, and cultivates to the highest 
attainable point that precision and security of grasp and spring which are so 
valuable in all exercises when practically applied. 

The position of the instructor should be close to the machine, in front of 
the learner, directing every motion, and in the early stages of his practice 
counting the time of his movements, and pointing out to him the features of 
the position in the ascent, rest, and descent. The instructor should also 
repeatedly execute the exercise himself in the manner most likely to make the 
learner comprehend its peculiarities, at the same time encouraging him, if 
timid or hesitating, and losing no opportunity of obtaining his entire-confi- 
dence and trust in every situation however critical, remembering always that 
nothing will so readilv make a man fall as the fear of falling. 

There should be at least two vaulting horses in a Gymnasium, of the respec- 
tive height of 4 feet and 5 feet ; where a third is provided, its height should 
be 5 feet 6 inches. The bodies should be formed of blocks of wood from 5 
feet to 5 feet 6 inches in length, and 12 inches in width, supported by strong 
framed legs screwed to the floor. The tops should be carefully rounded in 
every direction, so as to give a convenient seat for the body, and surface for 
the hands, whether the horse be used from the sides or from the croup. The 
centre portion should be carefully padded and covered with strong leather. 

First Series Standing. 

Second Series Running. 

Third Series By the croup. 

TO VAULT ON THE HORSE IN TWO MOVEMENTS. 

First Series. Position of attention close beside the horse. 

Exercise 1 . Raise the hands and place them at the distance on the 

Course I. back of the horse, the thumbs and fingers straight and 

together, and pointed to the front (Fig. 1) ; bend the legs, and on their return 
extension spring from the ground, inclining the body to the front, press 
strongly with the hands, extend the arms, and raise the trunk of the body 
above the horse, the legs straight and together, the feet together, and pointed 
to the ground (Fig. 2). 



?8 



APPENDIX C. 




2. Elevate the right leg, and by a continuous movement bring it over the 
Fig. 3. back of the horse, the column of the body 

turning with it, and as the right thigh 
approaches the right hand, advance the latter 
in a line with the left hand, and slowly lower 
the body to the saddle, bringing the head 
erect and the chest and trunk well advanced, 
the hands lightly resting on the thighs ; the 
lower limbs pendant, the toes pointed to the 
front (Fig. 3). 

In descending, incline the head and trunk 

of the body to the front, elevate the leg to the 

rear until it clears the back of the horse, the 

right rising to meet it, press from the hands, and descend yielding, facing the 

horse. 

This exercise to be repeated on the left. 




TO VAULT ON THE HORSE IN ONE MOVEMENT. 



First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 2. 1 and 2. As in first exercise, except that the right leg 

,Course I. should ascend and clear the back of the horse, in a con- 

tinuous movement from the ground to the seat in the saddle. 

Descend as in first exercise. 

This exercise to be repeated on the left. 



APPENDIX C. 

TO VAULT OVEft THE HORSE IN TWO MOVEMENTS 



79 



Fiust Series. Position as in exercise. 

Exercise 3. 1. As in first exercise to the extension of the arms (Fig. 

Course I. 4) 

2. Elevate both limbs in position to the right, and pass them over the 
horse, incline the head and shoulders forward, advancing the right hand in a 
line with the left (Fig. 5), 'press from both hands, and descend yielding, facing 
the horse. 




This exercise to be repeated, passing by the left. 

TO VAULT OVER THE HORSE IN ONE MOVEMENT. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 4. 1 and 2. As in preceding exercise, except that the legs 

Course I. should ascend and clear the back of the horse in one con- 

tinuous movement ; after the advance of the right hand, press strongly from 
both and descend yielding, facing the horse. 

As the body clears the horse the trunk and lower limbs should be extended 
in the line of the horse, the arms bent, the chest advanced, the head thrown 
back. 

This exercise to be repeated, passing by the left. 

TO VAULT ON THE HORSE RESTING ON THE E^EES. 



First Series. Position in first exercise. 

Exercise 5- 1. Raise the hands and place them at the distance on 

Course II. the back of the horse, as in first exercise ; bend the legs, 

and on their return extension spring from the ground, press strongly with the 



80 



Fig. 6. 




incline the head and shoulders forward, extend the arms, and bring 
9. the knees straight up between them, resting on the saddle (Fig. 
6). In descending, rapidly throw the hands to the front, as 
high as the face, spring from the rest with the lower limbs, 
upward and forward ^Fig. 7), and descend yielding (Fig. 8). 
TO VAULT ON THE HORSE RESTING ON THE FEET. 
First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 6, 1. As in preceding exercise, except that 

Course III. tne k nees should be brought up between the 

arms until they are as high as the breast, and the feet instead of 
the knees brought to the rest on the saddle ; immediately 
straighten the legs and come to the position of attention (Fig. 9). 
In descending spring straight to the front, and descend yielding. 
TO VAULT OVER THE HORSE BETWEEN THE HANDS. 
First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 7. 1. As in preceding exercise, except that the 

Course IV. feet, instead of resting on the saddle, should 



Fig. 10. 



Fig. 11. 



Fig. 12. 




APPENDIX C. 



81 



be shot through the space between the hands (Figs. 10, 11, and 12); press from 
the hands, and descend yielding. 

TO VAULT ON THE HORSE WITH ONE HAND. 

First Series. Position of attention facing the line of the horse. 

Exercise 8. 1. Raise the left hand and place it on the horse, and 

Course IY. extend the right arm to the rear (Fig. 13). 

Fig. 13. Fig. 14. 




2. Bend the legs as in first exercise, and on the return extension, elevate 
the right leg, and pass it over the horse, at the same time rapidly elevating 
the right arm above the head, the hand closed, and come to the seat in the 
saddle (Fig. 14). 

In descending, incline the head and shoulders to the front, press strongly 
from the left hand, and descend as in first exercise. 

This exercise to be repeated with the right hand. 



TO VAULT OVER THE HORSE WITH 
ONE HAND. 

First Series. Position as in eighth ex- 

Exercise 9. ercise. 

Course IV. 1. As in eighth exercise. 

2. As in eighth exercise to the spring ; 
press strongly with the left hand, elevate the 
right, pass the lower limbs in position over 
the horse (Fig. 15), and descend yielding fac- 
ing the horse. 

This exercise to be repeated with the right 
hand. 



Fig. 15. 




6a 



82 



APPENDIX C. 



TO VAULT ON THE HORSE. 



Fig. 16. 




Fig. 17. 
This exercise to be repeated on the left. 



Second Series. Position of atten- 

Exercise 10. tion 25 or 30 feet from 

Course I. the horse, 

1. Slowly begin the run, quickening the 
pace on the advance, and looking straight 
at the horse; when within 2 or 3 feet of 
the horse, spring from both feet, striking 
them full and flat upon the ground, the 
hands taking their place on the back of 
the horse immediately after the spring, 
pass the right leg over the horse, and come 
to the seat in the saddle in one movement, 
as in Fig. 3, 

In descending, incline the head and 
trunk of the body to the front, elevate the 
lower limbs to the rear straight above the 
horse, the toes pointed upward (Fig. 16); 
slowly let the lower limbs, with the entire 
column of the body in position, fall to the 
right and gradually descend over the arm 
until the feet come to the ground, the 
horse on the right (Fig. 17); descend yield* 
ing. 



TO VAULT OVER THE HORSE. 



Second Series. 
Exercise 1 1 . 
Course I. most s 

Fig. 18. 



Position as in tenth exercise. 

1. As in tenth exercise, quickening the pace to the ut- 
spring as in preceding exercise, passing the 
lower limbs in position over the horse to 
the right (Fig. 18), advance the right hand 
opposite the left, press strongly, and de- 
scend yielding, facing the horse 

In this exercise the body should be 
thrown well forward in the spring, the 
feet should describe a semicircle, begin- 
ning at the point where they quit the 
ground, and finishing where they alight, 
the hands being the center upon which 
the trunk and lower limbs turn; during this exercise, therefore, the chest 
should be continually turning towards the horse, the legs should be straight 
and together, the toes pointed, the whole body, when in the act of clearing 
the horse, forming one horizontal line over it. 
This exercise to be repeated on the left. 




APPENDIX C OCS 

TO VAULT ON THE HORSE RESTING ON THE KNEES. 

Second Series. Position as in tenth exercise. 

Exercise 12. 1. As in tenth exercise; spring straight to the front, the 

Course II. hands taking their place on the back of the horse imme- 

diately after the spring, bring both legs, with the knees closely bent up, 
between the arms and come to the rest on the knees, as in fifth exercise, 
Fig. 6. 
Descend as in fifth exercise, Figs. 7 and 8. 

TO VAULT ON THE HORSE RESTING ON THE FEET. 

Second Series. Position as in tenth exercise. 

Exercise 13. 1. As in preceding exercise, except that the feet, instead 

Course IH. of the knees, are placed on the saddle, straighten the legs as 
in sixth exercise, Fig. 9. 

In descending, extend the arms, spring straight to the front, and descend 
yielding. 

TO VAULT OVER THE HORSE BETWEEN THE HANDS. 

Second Series. Position as in tenth exercise. . 

Exercise 14. 1. As infpreceding exercise, except that the legs are still 

Course IV. more closely bent up, and the feet, instead of resting on the 

saddle, are shot through between the hands, as in seventh exercise, Figs. 10, 

11 and 12; press from the hands as the feet clear the horse, and descend 

yielding. 

TO VAULT OVER THE HORSE BY THE BACK LIFT. 

Second Series. Position as in tenth exercise. 

Exercise 15, 1. As in tenth exercise to the spring; place the hands 

Course TV. upon the horse, depress the head and shoulders until the 

Fig. 19. 




Fig. 20. 




.84 



APPENDIX C. 



latter are as low as the hands, and at the same time elevate the limbs, hips and 
loins by the rear, until they rise perpendiculary over the hands (Fig. 19), the 
legs straight and together, the toes pointed upwards; continue the sweep of 
the lower limbs, let the feet fall to the front, bending the back inwards (Fig. 
20), and descend yielding. 

TO VAULT OVER THE HORSE WITH ONE HAND. 



Fig. 21. 




Second Series, Position as in tenth 
Exercise 16. exercise. 
Course IV. 1. As in tenth ex- 

ercise to the spring; place the left hand 
on the back of the horse, throw the 
right arm above the head, and pass the 
lower limbs in position over the horse 
(Fig. 21), lean forward when clearing 
it, press strongly with the left hand, 
and descend yielding, the horse on the 
left. 

This exercise to be repeated with the 
right hand. 

TO VAULT TO THE CROUP. 

Third Series. Position of attention 25 or 30 feet from the horse, facing 
Exercise 17. the croup. 

Course II. 1. Slowly begin the run, quickening the pace on the ad- 

vance, and when within 2 or three feet of the croup, spring from both feet, 
immediately placing the hands on the croup, right and left; fully separate the 
lower limbs during the rise, and as the body reaches the croup advance the 
hands 6 or 8 inches along the back of the horse, and lightly sink to the seat on 
the croup (Fig. 22); the head and column of the body slightly inclined to the 
front, the lower limbs straight, the toes pointed to the front. 
Fig. 22. Fig. 23. 




In descending, incline the head and trunk to the horizontal line of the horse, 
elevate the lower limbs, straight and together, until they are in a line with the 
body (Fig. 23), shoot them out far to the rear, at the same time pressing from 
the hands, and descend yielding, facing the croup. 



APPENDIX C. 



85 



TO VAULT TO THE SADDLE. 

Third Series. Position as in seventeenth 
Exercise 18. exercise. 
Course III. 1. As in preceding exer- 

cise, until the lower limbs rise above the 
croup, but instead of allowing them to rest, 
continue the momentum of the spring, rap- 
Idly advance both hands to the saddle and 
lightly sink to the seat, place both hands on 
the thighs, the head erect, the breast ad- 
vanced, as in Fig. 24. 

In descending, replace the hands on the 
horse (Fig. 3), elevate the lower limbs, and 
descend as in tenth exercise, Figs. 16 and 17. 



Fig. 24. 




TO VAULT TO THE CROUP, RESTING ON THE KNEES. Fig. 25. 



Third Series. Position as in seventeenth exercise. 
Exercise 19. 1. As in seventeenth exercise to the 
Course II. spring; bring both legs, with the knees 

closely bent, up between the arms, and let them lightly 
rest on the croup between the hands (Fig. 25). 

In descending, incline the head and trunk of the 
body to the front, slowly elevate the lower limbs, and 
shoot them to the rear, as in seventeenth exercise (Fig. 
23), and descend yielding. 




TO VAULT TO THE CROUP, RESTING ON THE FEET. Fig. 26. 

Third Series. Position as in seventeenth exercise. 

^Exercise 20, 1. As in preceding exercise, except 

Course III. that the knees are lifted above the croup, 

as high as the breast, and the soles of the feet placed on 
the horse, straighten the legs, rising from the palms to the 
tips of the fingers, and stand upright on the croup (Fig. 
26). 

In descending, re-bend the knees, spring backwards, and 
descend yielding, facing the croup. 

TO VAULT TO THE CROUP, THE LEGS ON THE 
RIGHT. 

Third Series. Position as in seventeenth exercise. 

Exercise 21. 1. As in seventeenth exercise to the 

Course IV. spring, but instead of separating the 

lower limbs, keep them together, and during the rise to the 
croup, pass them to the right, and slowly sink to the side- 
seat on the croup (Fig. 27). 




86 



APPENDIX C. 



Fig. 27. 





In descending, incline the head and shoulders to the front, press strongly 
from the hands, elevate the lower limbs over the horse until they are above 
the head (Fig. 28), slowly let the lower limbs, with the entire column of the 
body, fall to the left, and gradually descend over the arm, until the feet come 
to the ground, the horse on the left. 

This exercise to be repeated on the left, descending on the right. 



TO VAULT TO THE CROUP, THE LEGS PASSING FROM RIGHT TO 

LEFT. 




Third Series. 
Exercise 22. 
Course IV. 



Position as in 
seventeenth ex- 
ercise. 



1. As in preceding exercise, until 
the rise above the croup, but in- 
stead of allowing the legs to rest 
upon it, continue the momentum of 
the spring, lifting the right hand 
and extending it rapidly above the 
head, and carry the limbs forward 
and upward over the horse in front 
(Fig. 29), and turning completely 
round upon the left hand, descend 
yielding, facing the line of the 
horse, the horse on the left (Fig. 30). 

This exercise to be repeated, the 
legs passing from left to right. 



Fig. 30. 



APPENDIX C. 87 



THE FIXED PARALLEL BARS. 



All exercises on this machine are performed between the bars, and are all 
virtually executed by the trunk and upper limbs, especially the former. They 
all begin with the body in the position given in the first exercise, with the 
feet lifted clear from the ground. 

The exercises naturally divide themselves into three series :— The first com- 
prises those which consist of traveling along the bars, following the natural 
shape and construction of the machine, to front or rear, single or double 
handed ; the second, those of oscillation between the bars, in which the exer- 
cises may be said to consist of an evolution, more or less complicated, passing 
from front to rear, or vice versa, between two points, of which the hand-grasp 
forms, as it were, the pivot or centre. This is a most valuable and attractive 
series, giving abundant and varied exercise to the entire column of the body, 
and to the arms whether bent or extended ; the third series is a combination 
of these two, also valuable, as strongly addressing the trunk of the body. 

Every exercise is here given in its perfect form, but with beginners of ordi- 
nary physical capacity, they may and should be approached through several 
stages of less difiiculty. Thus, in those of the first series, the perfectly up- 
right position of body, advanced breast, straight limbs, and erect head, may 
be departed from in the earlier stages of practice. Also, a free lateral inclina- 
tion from hand to hand ; and, in the front and rear exercises, with both hands 
at once, a more energetic upright lift of the lower limbs may be allowed. 

The second series may be approached, first, by beginning with the feet be- 
tween the uprights, near the entrance to the bars, with or without a spring, 
as may be required ; second, from the centre of the bars under the hands and 
from the ground direct, with or without a spring ; third, as given in the text, 
with the feet free from the ground, in position, the action coming from the 
loins, resting entirely on the hands. This machine is invaluable in a gymna- 
sium, the exercises being not only numerous, but varied, interesting, and in 
themselves pleasurable, capable of much artistic effect, and requiring equally 
muscular power and dexterity of action in trunk and limb. Again, there is no 
single exercise on this machine which requires violent or sudden effort ; all 
the movements flow from one point to another, and the skill displayed in 
their execution and the advantage obtained from their practice lie in the cer- 
tainty, steadiness, and regularity with which the complex action of the step 
is performed. 

A point demanding very careful observance is, that the learner shall never 
separate his legs while executing the exercises of the second series ; they must 
be kept rigidly in position, and this principle must be firmly inculcated from 
the first day's lesson. 

The Parallel Bars should be from 8 feet to 10 feet long, 20 inches apart 
inside, and fixed at a height from the floor of 3 feet 8 inches. The upper sur- 
face of the bars should be rounded to fit the hands. 

First Series Traveling. 

Second Series Osciiating. 

Third Series Combinations. 



68 



APPENDIX C. 



THE SINGLE MARCH FORWARDS. 



Fig.l. 



First Series. Po- 
Exercise 1. sition 

Course I. of at- 

tention at the entrance 
to the bars. 

1. Raise the hands 
and place them on the 
bars, the thumbs in- 
side, the fingers out- 
side, extended, and 
pointed downwards ; 
press from the hands 
until the arms are com- 
pletely extended, the 
head upright, the eyes directed to the front, the chest advanced, the shoulders 
square to the front, the column of the body upright and firm, the lower limbs 
straight and together, the feet together and pointed to the ground (Fig. 1). 

2. Rest on the left hand, advance the right six inches beyond it along the 
bar, advance the left six inches beyond the right. Repeat. 

THE SINGLE MARCH BACKWARDS. 




rLU 



First Series. Position of attention, the back to the bars. 

Exercise 2. 1. As in first exercise (Fig. 2). 

Course I. 2. As in first exercise, except the movement is back- 

ward instead of forward. Repeat. 

Fig. 2. 




APPENDIX C. 

THE DOUBLE MARCH FORWARDS. 



89 



First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 3. 1. As in first exercise, 

Course III. except that the lower limbs 

are bent at the knee at a right angle with the body, 
the toes pointed to the rear (Fig. 3). 

2. Spring forward with both hands, the distance 
of the step in first exercise, retaining the body and 
lower limbs in position. Repeat. 

THE DOUBLE MARCH BACKWARDS. 

First Series. Position as in second exer- 

Exercise 4. cise. 

Course I. 1. As in third exercise. 

2. The same as in third exercise, except that the 
movement is backward instead of forward. R epeat. 



Fig. 3. 






TO CLEAR THE BAR BY THE FRONT. 

Second Series. Position of attention between the bars at the centre. 

Exercise 5- 1. Raise the hands and place them on the bars opposite 

Course I. each other, the thumbs inside, the fingers outside, extended 

and pointed downwards. Press from the hands until the arms are completely 
extended, the legs together and straight, the toes pointed to the ground, the 
head erect, the trunk of the body upright, the chest advanced, the shoulders 



90 



APPENDIX C. 



Fig. 6. 



Second Series. 
Exercise 6. 
Course II. 



square to the front (Fig 5). 

2. Elevate the lower 
limbs in position, the toes 
pointed to the front until 
they rise above the level 
of the bars, and pass them 
over the right bar (Fig. 6); 
when clear of the bar, re- 
lax the extension of the 
limbs, press strongly from 
the left hand, spring to 
the ground, and descend 
yielding. 

This exercise to be re- 
peated, clearing the left 
bar. 

TO CLEAR THE BAR BY THE REAR. 

Postion as in fifth exercise. 

1. As in fifth exercise. 

2. Elevate the lower limbs to the front, as in preceding 




Fig. 7. 




exercise, and on their return 
oscilliation to the rear incline 
the head and shoulders to the 
front, bending the arms, and 
elevate the lower limbs, the 
toes pointed to the rear, until 
they rise above the level of 
the bars, and pass them over 
the right bar; (at this point 
the lower limbs, trunk and 
head, are in the horizontal 
line of the bars, Fig. 7,) press 
strongly from the left hand, 

clear the right bar, spring to the ground, and descend yielding, facing the 

bars. 
This exercise to be repeated, clearing the left bar. 

TO CLEAR THE BAR BY THE REAR. 

A SECOND METHOD. 

Second Series. Position as in fifth exercise. 
Exercise 7. 1. As in fifth exercise. 

Course III. 2. Slowly incline the head and shoulders to the front, 

without swing, bending the arms, elevating the lower limbs to the rear, and 
clearing the bar, as in preceding exercise. 
This exercise to be repeated, clearing the left bar. 






APPENDIX C. 



91 



TO REST ON THE LEFT BAR AND CLEAR THE RIGHT, BY THE 

FRONT. 

Second Series. Position as in fifth exercise. 

Exercise 8, 1. As in fifth exercise. 

Course I. 2. Elevate the lower limbs in position to the front until 

they rise above the level of the bars, pass them over and let them rest on the 

left bar, relaxing the extension (Fig. 8) 

Fig. 8. Fig. 9. 




3. Press strongly with the hands, elevate the lower limbs in position above 
the bar, sweep them across and clear both bars to the right front (Fig. 9), and 
descend yielding, facing the line of the bars. 

This exercise to be repeated, resting on the right bar, and clearing the left. 

TO REST ON THE LEFT BAR AND CLEAR THE RIGHT, BY THE 

REAR. 

Second Series. Position as in fifth exercise. 

Exercise 9. 1. As in fifth exercise. 

Course II. 2. Slowly incline the head and shoulders to the front, 

bending the arms ; elevate the lower limbs, the toes pointed to the rear, until 

they rise above the level of the bars, as in Fig. 7 ; at this point pass them 

over and let them rest on the left bar, relaxing the extension, the feet together, 

the toes pointed downwards, as in Fig. 10. 

3. Incline the head and shoulders to the front, bend the arms until the 
shoulders are as low as the bar, and at the same time elevate the lower limbs 
in position, sweep them across both bars to the left rear, and descend yield- 
ing. 

This exercise to be repeated, resting on the right bar, and clearing the left. 



92 



APPENDIX C. 



TO REST ON THE RIGHT BAR IN FRONT AND CLEAR IT BY THE 

REAR. 



Second Series. Position as in fifth exercise. 
Exercise 10. I. As in fifth exercise. 

Course II 2. Elevate the lower limbs in position to the front, until 

they rise above the level of the bars, pass them over and let them rest on the 
right bar, relax the extension (Fig. 10) ; press strongly with the hands, elevate 
the lower limbs in position above the bar, pass them between the bars, and 
let them swing to the rear, at the same time bending the arms until the shoul- 
ders are as low as the bars, and bringing the column of the body with the 
lower limbs to the horizontal line of the bars (Fig. 11) ; clear the right bar by 
the rear and descend yielding, facing the bars. 



Fig. 10. 



Fig. 11. 




This exercise to be repeated on the left bar. 

The same exercise to be repeated with the following variations :— 

1. Resting on the right bar in the front and clearing the left by the rear. 

2. Resting on the left bar in the front and clearing the right by the rear. 

TO REST ON BOTH BARS IN FRONT, AND CLEAR THE RIGHT BY 

THE REAR. 



Second Series. Position as in fifth exercise. 

Exercise 11. 1. As in fifth exercise. 

Course II. 2. Elevate the lower limbs in position, the toes pointed 



APPENDIX C. 



Fig. 12. 




to the front, until they 
rise above the level of the 
bars ; at this point sepa- 
rate the lower limbs and 
let them fall to the rest 
on the bars (Fig. 12) ; re- 
elevate them above the 
bars, coming to the posi- 
tion at the elevation, let 
them sweep to the rear, 
as in preceding exercise, 
clear the right bar, and 
descend yielding. 
This exercise to be repeated, clearing the left bar. 

TO REST ON THE LEFT BAR IN THE REAR, AND CLEAR IT BY 

THE FRONT. 

Second Series. Position as in fifth exercise. 
Exercise 12. 1. As in fifth exercise. 

Course II. 2. As in ninth exercise to the rest on the bar ; incline 

the head and shoulders to the front, bend the arms until the shoulders are as 
low as the bars, the head between them, re-elevate the lower limbs in posi- 
tion, passing them between the bars, let them sweep to the front and clear 
the left bar, as in Fig. 9, and descend yielding. During the last movement 
bring the head and shoulders to the vertical position, gradually straighten the 
arms and retain them straight while the feet clear the bar. 

This exercise to be repeated on the right bar. 

The same exercise to be repeated with the following variations : — 

1. Resting on the left bar in the rear, and clearing the right in the front. 

2. Resting on the right bar in the rear, and clearing the left by the front. 

TO REST ON BOTH BARS IN THE REAR, AND CLEAR THE RIGHT 
BAR BY THE FRONT. 



Second Series. P o s i - Fig. 13. 

Exercise 1 3 . tion as in 

Course II. fifth ex- 

ercise. 

1. As in fifth exercise. 

2. Slowly incline the head 
and shoulders to the front, 
bending the the arms, ele- 
vate the lower limbs to the 
rear, until they rise above 
the level of the bars, fully 
separate them and let them fall to the rest on the bars (Fig. 13) ; incline the 




U4 



APPENDIX C. 



head and shoulders to the front, re-elevate the lower limbs, and as they sweep 
o the front in position, let them clear the right bar, and descend yielding. 
This exercise to be repeated, clearing the left bar. 

TO PASS BY THE REAR BY THE SINGLE SWING. 

Second Series. Position as in fifth exercise. 

35xercise 14. 1. As in fifth exercise. 

Course III. 2. Elevate the lower limbs in position until the feet are 

as high as the face ; from this let them fall in a full sweep, and passing be- 
tween the bars, rise to the rear until they are above the head ; during the 
latter half of this oscillation, let the arms slowly bend until the shoulders are 
as low as the bars, the head between them (Fig, 14) ; slowly let the lower limbs 

Fig. 14. Fig. 15. 





with the entire column of the body in position incline, and gradually descend 
to the right over the arm (Fig. 15), until the feet come to the ground, the bar 



This exercise to be repeated over the left bar. 

TO REST ON THE LEFT BAR IN FRONT, AND CLEAR IT IN THE 
REAR BY THE SINGLE SWING. 

Second Series. Position as in fifth exercise. 

Exercise 15- 1. As *n fifth exercise. 

Course III. 2. Elevate the lower limbs in position to the front, to 

the level of the bars, pass them over and let them rest on the left bar, relaxing 
the extension (Fig, 16) ; re-elevate the lower limbs in position above the bar, 
pass them between the bars, and as in preceding exercise, incline the head 
and shoulders to the front, complete the rearward oscillation (Fig. 17), de- 
scending to the ground over the left bar, the bar on the left. 



APPENDIX C 



95 



Fig. 16. 



Fig. 17. 





This exercise to be repeated over the right bar. 

The same exercise to be repeated with the following variations : 

1. Resting on the left bar in front and clearing the right in the rear. 

2. Resting on the right bar in front and clearing the left in the rear. 

TO REST ON BOTH BARS IN FRONT, AND CLEAR THE LEFT 
BAR IN THE REAR BY THE SINGLE SWING 

Second Sebtes. Position as in fifth exercise. 

Exercise 10. 1. As in fifth exercise. 

Coukse III. 2. Elevate the lower limbs in position, the toes pointed 

to the front, until they rise above the level of the bars ; at this point separate 
the lower limbs and let them fall to the rest on the. bars (Fig. 18) ; press 
strongly with the hands, re-elevate the lower limbs above the bars, and as 
they sweep to the rear, incline the head and shoulders to the front, beDding 
the arms as in fourteenth exercise, complete the rearward oscillation (Fig. 19). 
descending to the ground over the left bar. 

Fig. 18. Fig. 19. 





This exercise to be repeated clearing the right bar. 



96 



APPENDIX C. 



TO REST ON THE LEFT BAR IN THE REAR BY THE SINGLE 
SWING AND CLEAR THE RIGHT BY THE REAR. 

Second Series. Position as in fifth exercise. 

Exercise 17- 1. As in fifth exercise. 

Course III. 2. As in fourteenth exercise until the elevation of the 

feet above the head ; at this point relax the extension of the legs, pass them 
over and let them rest on the left bar (Fig. 20) ; incline the head and shoulders 
to the front, bend the arms until the shoulders are as low as the bars, the 
head between them, and at the same time again elevate the lower limbs above 
Fig. 20. Fig. 21. 




^^ 




the head (Fig. 21) ; pass them across the bars to the right, descending over 
the right bar. 
This exercise to be repeated resting on the right bar and clearing the left. 

TO REST ON BOTH BARS IN THE REAR BY THE SINGLE SWING 
AND CLEAR THE RIGHT BY THE REAR. 

Second Series. Position as in fifth exercise. 

Exercise 18. 1. As in fifth exercise. 

Course III. 2. As in preceding exercise to the elevation of the feet 

above the head ; at this point slowly separate the lower limbs, relaxing the 
extension, and bring them, to the rest one on each bar (Fig. 13) ; incline the 
head and shoulders to the front, and bend the arms as in preceding exercise, 
elevate the lower limbs above the head, and pass the legs over the right bar 
as in preceding exercise. 
This exercise to be repeated over the left bar. 

TO REST ON THE LEFT BAR IN THE REAR BY THE SINGLE 
SWING AND CLEAR IT BY THE FRONT. 

Second Series. Position as in fifth exercise. 

Exercise 19. 1. As in fifth exercise. 

Course III. 2. As in preceding exercise to the rest on the left bar, 

and the re- elevation of the lower limbs above the head, as in Fig. 21 ; from 



APPENDIX C. 



97 



this point let the lower limbs slowly descend in position and passing between 
the bars sweep to the front, clear the right bar and descend yielding. During 
the descent of the lower limbs, bring the head and shoulders to the vertical 
position, gradually straighten the arms, and retain them straight while the 
feet clear the bar. 

This exercise to be repeated resting on the right bar in the rear and clearing 
it in the front. 

The same exercise to be repeated with the following variations : 

1. Resting on the left bar in the rear and clearing the right in the front. 

2. Resting on the right bar in the rear and clearing the left in the front. 

TO REST ON BOTH BARS IN THE REAR BY THE SINGLE SWING 
AND CLEAR THE RIGHT BAR BY THE FRONT. 

Second Series. Position as in fifth exercise. 

Exercise 20. 1. As in fifth exercise. 

Course III. 2. As in fourteenth exercise to the elevation of the 

lower limbs above the head ; at this point slowly separate the legs, relaxing 
the extension, and let them fall to the rest, one on each bar ; incline the head 
and shoulders to the front, bend the arms, re-elevate the lower limbs above 
the head ; from this point let the lower limbs descend as in preceding exercise, 
clear the right bar and descend yielding. 
This exercise to be repeated, clearing the left bar. Fig. 22. 

TO PASS BY THE FRONT BY THE DOU- 
BLE SWING. 

Second Series. Position as in fifth exer- 

Exercise 21. cise. 

Course IV. 1. As in fifth exercise. 

2. Elevate the lower limbs in position until 
the feet are as high as the face ; from this point 
let them descend, and, sweeping between the 
bars, ascend to the rear until they are above the 
head, the arms remaining straight, the column 
of the body and the lower limbs slightly curved 
throughout their length (Fig. 22) ; from this 
point let the feet again descend, and passing 
between the bars on the return oscillation, clear 
the right bar in front, and descend yielding. \^ 

This exercise to be repeated on the left bar. 




TO REST ON THE LEFT BAR IN FRONT AND CLEAR IT BY THE 
DOUBLE SWING. 



Second Series. Position as in fifth exercise. 

Exercise 22. 1. As in fifth exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Elevate the lower limbs in position to the level of 

the bars, pass thein over and let them rest on the left bar, relaxing the exten- 

7a 



»0 APPENDIX C. 

sion as in Fig. 16 ; press strongly with the hands, re-elevate the lower limbs 
above the bar, pass them between the bars, and complete the double swing as 
in preceding exercise, clearing the left bar. 

This exercise to be repeated on the right bar. 

The same exercise to be repeated with the following variations : 

1. Resting on the left bar in front and clearing the right. 

2. Resting on the right bar in front and clearing the left. 

TO REST ON BOTH BARS IN FRONT AND CLEAR THE LEFT BAR 
BY THE DOUBLE SWING. 

Second Sebies. Position as in fifth exercise. 

Exercise 23. 1. As in fifth exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Elevate the lower limbs in position to the front, until 

they rise above the level of the bars ; separate them and let them fall to the 
rest, one on each bar, as in Fig. 18 ; press strongly with the hands, re-elevate 
the lower limbs above the bars, and complete the double swing as in twenty- 
first exercise, clearing the left bar. 
This exercise to be repeated clearing the right bar. 

THE SINGLE MARCH AND REST FORWARDS. 



Third Series. 
Exercise 24. 
Course IV. 
Fig. 23. 



Position as in first exercise. 

1. As in first exercise. 

2. Elevate the lower limbs in position and bring them to 
Fig. 24. the rest on the left bar, as in pre- 
ceding exercises ; incline the 
head and shoulders to the front, 
re-grasp the bars in advance of 
the thighs (Fig. 23), re- elevate 
the lower limbs until the feet are 
above the head, as in seventeenth 
exercise (Fig. 24); from this 
point let them slowly descend in 
position, and passing between 
the bars, sweep to the front, and 
again come to the rest on the left 
bar. During the descent of the 
lower limbs, gradually straighten 
the arms, and retain them straight 

until the legs rest on the bar. Repeat. 

At the end of the bars on the last elevation of the feet above the head, 
incline the trunk and lower limbs over the left bar and descend yielding as in 
fourteenth exercise. 

This exercise to be 

The same exercise 
nately. 




repeated on the left bar. 
to be repeated resting on the right and left bar alter- 






APPENDIX C. 



99 



THE SINGLE MARCH AND REST BACKWARDS. 

Third Series. Position as in second exercise. 

Exercise 25. 1. As in second exercise. 

Course IY. 2. As in fourteenth exercise to the elevation of the feet 

above the head ; at this point relax the extension of the legs, pass them over 
and let them rest on the right bar ; pass both hands behind the thighs and 
re-grasp the bars (Fig. 25), re-elevate the lower limbs, pass them between the 
bars, and again let them rise above the head (Fig. 26) and again come to the 
rest on the right bar. Repeat. 

Fig. 25. Fig. 26. 





At the end of the bars on the last elevation of the feet above the head, 
pass over the right bar, as in preceding exercise. 

This exercise to be repeated on the left bar. 

The same exercise to be repeated, resting on the right and left bar alter- 
nately. 

THE DOUBLE MARCH AND REST FORWARDS. 

Thtrd Serdss. Position as Fig. 27. Fig. 28. 

Exercise 26. in first exer- 

Course IY. cise. 

1. As in first exercise. 

2. Elevate the lower limbs in 
position, the toes pointed to the 
front, until they rise above the 
level of the bars ; at this point 
separate the lower limbs and let 
them fall to the rest on the bars; 
incline the head and shoulders 
to the front, re-grasp the bars in 
advance of the thighs (Fig. 27), 
re-elevate the lower limbs until 
the feet are above the head, as in 
twenty-fourth exercise (Fig. 28) ; 
let the lower limbs descend as in 




100 



APPENDIX C. 



twenty -fourth exercise and again come to the rest in front on both bars. Ke- 
peat. 

At the end of the bars on the last elevation of the feet above the head, 
continue the movement of the lower limbs, carrying the feet completely over 
the head to the front, press strongly with the hands and descend yielding, 
the back to the end of the bars. 

THE DOUBLE MARCH AND REST BACKWARDS. 

Third Series. Position as in second exercise. 

Exercise 27. 1. As in second exercise. 

Course IV. 2. As in fourteenth exercise to the elevation of the feet 

above the head ; at this point slowly separate the legs, relaxing the extension, 
and let them fall to the rest, one on each bar ; pass both hands behind the 
thighs, and re-grasp the bars (Fig. 29) ; re-elevate the lower limbs to the front, 
pass them between the bars, and let them rise until they are above the head 
(Fig. 30) ; slowly separate the legs, relaxing the extension, and again come to 
the rest on the bars. Repeat. 

At the end of the bars, from the last rest, bring the lower limbs again be- 
tween the bars, and shoot them out to the rear in the line of the bars, pushing 
strongly with the hands. 

Fig. 29. Fig. 30. Fig. 31. 






TO MARCH ABOVE THE BARS. 

Third Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 28. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course IV. 2. As in twentieth exercise to the elevation of the feet 

above the head (Fig. 31) ; retain the arms straight, advance the right hand six 



i 



APPENDIX C. 101 

inches beyond the left, advance the left hand six inches beyond the right. 
Repeat. 

At the end of the bars, carry the feet completely over the head to the 
ground, and descend yielding. 

This exercise to be repeated backward. 

This exercise to be repeated with the arms bent, as in Fig. 30. 



THE MOVABLE PARALLEL BARS. 

The exercises on this machine are as numerous as those on the fixed bars, 
but of a somewhat inferior order, although useful and interesting. They 
address themselves much more direc ctly to the upper limbs, giving power 
and security to the grasp, and certainty and facility of action to the hand and 
arm. They divide themselves into three series, the first consisting of exer- 
cises executed above the bars, when low ; the second, of those under the 
bars, when elevated to the reach of the hands, with or without oscillation ; 
and the third, of those rising between the bars. The first is chiefly directed 
to the lower limbs ; the second to the upper limbs alone ; and the third to 
both. The first series may be performed also on the fixed bars, but as its 
exereises may be intensified or modified by the elevation or depression of the 
bars, they properly belong to this machine. 

The position of the instructor should be on the right or left front of the 
learner. 

This machine consists of two bars and two sets of standards, in all respects 
the same as the Vaulting Bar and standards already described. The bars 
should be twenty-two inches apart, from centre to centre. Where there are 
Moveable Parallel Bars in a gymnasium, one of them is generally used for the 
Vaulting Bar, the other being temporarily removed. 

First Series Over the Bars. 

Second Series Under the Bars. 

Third Series Rising Between the Bars. 

TO CLEAR THE BARS, RESTING ON THE FIRST. 

Fisrt Series. Position of attention, facing the bars. 

Exercise 1. 1. Raise both hands and grasp the first bar, the hands 

Course I. at the distance, the fingers and thumb meeting, the feet 



102 



APPENIDX C. 



Fig. 1. immediately under the 

hands. 

2. Spring from the 
ground to the right and 
rest with both feet on the 
first bar, and at the same 
time pass the right hand 
over to the second bar 
opposite the left (Fig. 1). 

3. Press strongly from 
both hands and feet, clear 

the second bar, and descend yielding, facing the bars. 
This exercise to be repeated on the left. 

TO CLEAR THE BARS, RESTING ON THE SECOND. 




Fig. 2. 



First Series. Position as in first ex- 
Exercise 2. ercise. 
Course I. 1. As in first exercise. 
2. Spring from the ground to the right, 
clear the first bar, the lower limbs straight 
and together, and rest with both feet on 
the second bar, at the same time passing 
the right hand over to the second bar, 
opposite the] left (Fig. 2). 

3. Press strongly from both hands and feet, and descend yielding, facing 
the bars. 

This exercise to be repeated on the left. 

TO CLEAR THE BARS IN ONE MOVEMENT. 




Fig. 3. 




First Series. 
Exercise 3. 
Course II. 



Position as in first 
exercise. 

1. As in first 
exercise. 
2. Press from both hands and feet 
simultaneously, throw the lower limbs, 
straight and together, to the right (Fig. 
3), clear both bars and descend yield- 
ing, facing the bars. 
This exercise to be repeated on the left. 

TO CLEAR THE FIRST BAR BY THE REAR AND THE SECOND 

BY THE FRONT. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 4. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course III. 2. Spring from the ground, throw the lower limbs in 

position to the right, and clear the first bar (Fig. 4), and at the instant of 



APPENDIX C. 



103 



Fig. 4. 



Fig. 5. 




their elevation above the first bar, pass the right hand over to the second ; let 
the lower limbs continue their fall between the bars and ascend in front (Fig. 
5), clear the second bar, and descend yielding, in the line of the bars. 
This exercise to be repeated on the left. 

TO CLEAR BOTH BARS SEPARATELY BY THE REAR. 




First Series. Position as in first Fig. 6. 

Exercise 5- exercise. 

Course HI. 1. As in first 

exercise. 

2. As in preceding exercise to the 
elevation of the lower limbs to the front 
after clearing the first bar ; from this 
point let the lower limbs fall again 
between the bars, return to the rear 
(Fig. 6), clear the second bar, and descend yielding, facing the bars. 

This exercise to be repeated on the left. 

TO PASS FROM THE FIRST TO THE SECOND BAR, THE RIGHT 
HAND LEADING. 



Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 6. 1. Raise both hands and grasp 

Course I. the first bar, the hands at the dis- 

tance, the fingers and thumbs together, sink to the full 
extension of the arms, bend the lower limbs, the knees 
in a line with the body, the feet behind, the head held 
back, the eyes directed to the reach of the hands. 

2. Sustain the body in position, advance the right 
hand and grasp the second bar (Fig. 7), the left follow- 
ing ; retake the grasp of the first bar with the left 
hand, the right following, replace the feet on th e 
ground and rise to the first position. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand lead- 
ing. 



Fig. 7. 




104 



APPENDIX C. 



TO PASS FROM THE FIRST TO THE SECOND BAR, CHANGING 

FRONT. 

Fig. 8. Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 7. 1. As in sixth exercise. 

Course II. 2. As in sixth exercise, until both 

hands are on the second bar, quit the grasp with the 
right, swing on the left, pass under the bar, advance 
the right hand the distance beyond the left and grasp 
the bar (Fig. 8), changing front ; reverse the grasp of 
the left hand, retaking the same part of the bar, 
advance the the right hand again to the first bar, the 
left following, re-change the front, replace the feet on 
the ground and rise to the first position. 

TO PASS FROM THE FIRST TO THE SECOND 
BAR, BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 8. 1. As in sixth exercise, except 

Course III. that in lifting the feet from the 

ground, press slightly from the rear, causing a forward oscillation ; augment 
the rearward return by the action of the loins, and on the forward return, as 
the feet come under the bar, bend the arms and quit the grasp with both 
hands, and spring to the second bar ; govern the forward oscillation and on 
the rearward return spring backwards to the first bar, replace the feet on the 
ground and rise to the first position. 

TO PASS FROM THE FIRST TO THE SECOND BAR, BOTH HANDS 
AT ONCE, CHANGING FRONT. 




Fig. 9. 




Second Sertes. Position as in 

Exercise 9. first exercise. 

Course IV. 1. As in pre- 

ceding exercise to the spring to the 
second bar ; augment both the for- 
ward and the rearward oscillation, 
and on the return forward quit the 
grasp with both hands, rapidly 
change front (Fig. 9), and re-take 
the bar, renew the oscillation, spring 
again to the first bar, again change 
front, replace the feet on the ground, 
and rise to the first position. 



Third Series. 
Exercise 10. 
Course I. 



TO REST ON THE SINGLE BAR. 

Position of attention at the centre of the bars. 

1. Raise both hands and grasp the bars right and left, 

the fingers and thumbs meeting. 



APPENDIX C. 



105 




2. Lift both feet from Fig. 10. Fig. 11. 

the ground, and pass them 
over the left bar, resting 
on it under the knees, the 
head and shoulders held 
back, the trunk of the 
body sustained ; quit the 
grasp of the left hand, 
retake it above the bar on 
the inside, at the same 
time elevating the elbow, 
and resting the fore- arm 
on the bar, the -right fol- 
lowing (Fig. 10) ; press 
from both hands to the 
full extension of the arms, and rise seated on the bar. 

In descending pass the right hand over to the left bar, reverse the grasp of 
the left, pass the right hand in front of the body and re-grasp the bar at the 
distance beyond the left, at the same time quitting the seat and bringing the 
body round to front the bar (Fig. 11), slowly descend until the feet reach the 
ground, and quit the grasp of the hands. 

This exercise to be repeated on the right bar. 

TO REST ON THE DOUBLE BARS. 

Thied Series. Position as in tenth exercise. 

Exercise 11. 1. As in tenth exercise. 

Course I. 2. Lift both feet from the ground, and pass them by the 

front over the bars, right and left ; change and re-take the grasp of the hands, 

as in tenth exercise (Fig. 12), and rise seated on the bars. 

In descending, pass the right leg over to the left bar, and complete the 
descent as in tenth exercise. 

Fig. 12. Fig. 13. Fig. 14. 





106 APPENDIX C. 

TO RISE BETWEEN THE BARS AND REST ON THE SINGLE BAR. 

Third Series. Position as in tenth exercise. 

Exercise 12. 1. Spring from the ground until the shoulders are above 

Course II. the bars, at the same time bringing the closed hands up 

to the breasts, spread out the folded arms horizontally, and by them rest 
on the bars, the chest advanced, the head held back, the lower limbs straight 
and together, the toes pointed to the ground (Fig. 13). 

2. Grasp the bars right and left, press strongly from both hands, lean 
forward, straighten the arms and rise above the bars resting on the hands' 
(Fig. 14), elevate the lower limbs and pass them over the left bar, resting on 
it under the knees, and rise seated on the bar as in tenth exercise. 

Descend as in tenth exercise. 

This exercise to be repeated resting on the right bar. 

TO RISE BETWEEN THE BARS AND REST ON BOTH. 

Third Series. Position as in tenth exercise. 

Exercise 13. 1. As in preceding exprcise. 

Course II. 2. As in preceding exercise to the rest on the hand& 

above the bars ; elevate the lower limbs, pass one over each bar, and rise- 

seated on the bars as in eleventh exercise. 

In descending, rest strongly on the hands, raise the lower limbs, repass 
them over the bars, and bring them to the vertical line between the bars, the 
legs straight and together, the toes pointed to the ground, the column of the 
body upright, the head erect, the eyes directed to the front ; quit the grasp of 
the hands, bring the arms close in by the sides, and descend yielding. 

TO REST ON THE LEFT BAR AND CLEAR THE RIGHT, BY THE 

FRONT. 



Third Series. Position as in tenth exercise. 

Exercise 14. 1. Spring from the ground until the bxeast is above the 

Course IV. bars, seize both bars right and left, and immediately 

straighten the arms and come to the rest on the hands above the bars, elevate 
the lower limbs in position and pass them over the left bar, resting on it under 
Fig. 15. the knees. 

2. Press strongly with the hands, elevate the 
lower limbs in position above the bar, sweep 
them across and clear both bars to the right front 
(Fig. 15), quit the grasp, and descend yielding, 
in the line of the bars. 

This exercise to be repeated, resting on the 
right bar and clearing the left. 




APPENDIX C. 



107 




TO RISE BY THE FIRST BAR AND DESCEND BY THE SECOND. 

Third Series. Position as in first 

Exercise 15. exercise. 

Course III. 1. As in first exercise. 

2. Lift both feet frcm the ground, and 
pass them over the second bar, resting on 
it under the knees, the fore-legs pendent, 
the trunk of the body sustained, the head 
held back ; pass the head and shoulders 
under the bar and rear them above it, resting on the back of the neck, quit 
the grasp of the right hand, bring the arm between the j?ig. 17. 

bars, and stretch it along the surface of the first bar, to 
the right, grasping the bar, the left hand following on 
the left bar (Fig. 16) ; gradually bring the hands to- 
gether, along the bar, behind the back, and rise, seated 
on the second bar. 

In descending, pass the right hand over to the second 
bar, the left following, reverse the grasp of both hands, 
elongate the trunk and lower limbs, setting the body 
free from the bar and resting sustained by the grasp of 
the hands in front of the bar (Fig. 17) ; gradually con- 
tract the aims, sink beneath the bar, and lower the feet 
to the ground. 




THE TRAPEZIUM. 



In importance this machine ranks with the fixed parallel bars, not so much 
on account of the number of its exercises as from their artistic character, and 
the power which they possess or testing and increasing the capacity of the 
trunk and upper limbs. 

Every exercise on this machine consists of one or more evolutions of less 
or greater difficulty, of which the hand-grasp on the rope or the bar, or on 
both, forms the centre, the entire weight of the body and force of the move- 
ment being sustained by it. They all terminate on the spot, and in the posi- 
tion, in which they begin. 

The exercises on this machine divide themselves into two series, — in those 
of the first, the ropes are grasped by either one or both hands ; in those of the 
second, the ropes are carefully avoided and the grasp of the hands is on the 
bar alone. 

From these two series a third is formed, consisting of certain of the exer- 
cises of each executed in combination ; in one of these combinations, the 
entire second series can be executed without pause. 

The whole of the exercises of the first series may be called double exercises, 
consisting of one evolution in ascending, and another in descending; those 



108 APPENDIX C. 

of the second series, with the exception of the last, are all complete circles in 
given positions. 

All these exercises may be practiced by beginners, the form of each, given 
in the text, being the perfect one, but capable of modification for initiatory 
practice. Thus in introducing a beginner to the first exercise, instead of 
grasping the rope a hand's-breadth above the bar, he may grasp it a foot or 
even more above the bar, the left hand following close under the right, and 
then day by day the space between the hands and the bar should be reduced, 
until these are placed as directed in the text. The same course may be liter- 
ally followed in the second exercise. In the third and fourth, the initiatory 
practice may be accompanied by a spring from the ground, which should be 
gradually lessened until the effort falls entirely upon the upper limbs, as indi- 
cated in the text. In the fifth the limbs should be supported and guided by 
the instructor, this support being gradually withdrawn, until the learner can 
execute the movements without help. 

The exercises of the second series are all arduous, but also admit of gradual 
approach. In the first, a slight spring may be taken, and both arms and legs 
allowed to remain bent ; the spring may then be dispensed with ; next, the 
legs may remain bent at the commencement, and be extended during the rise ; 
to be followed by the straight leg and bent arm, leading direct to the perfect 
exercise. In the second exercise the gradations by which it may be ap- 
proached are less marked ; it may be viewed as commencing where the second 
exercise in the first series terminates, and there is no intermediate practice ; 
nothing but perseverance against repeated failures will overcome the diffi- 
culty, for the position is not such as will admit of direct help from the 
instructor, and all that can be given in this exercise must be but the steadying 
of the limbs, enabling the learner to hold his own. The fourth and fifth exer- 
cise have no gradations on this machine, but may be approached here by 
practice on others, where, on account of such machines being fixed and firm, 
they are less difficult. The sixth may be approached by practice on a machine 
that turns with the hand, such as the Pair of Rings. The seventh is always 
found to be one of the most difficult on this machine, and requires the greatest 
care in its execution ; the pause in the horizontal line should never exceed a 
few seconds. The variation of this exercise sometimes performed, of passiDg 
from the horizontal line over the bar in position, should never be allowed, as 
it is in the highest degree dangerous. 

The best grasp for the instructor in directing the evolutions on the trapezium 
is a firm hold of the wrist with the left hand, the right firmly grasping the leg 
of the trowsers at the ankle. 

The position of the instructor should be on the right or left of the machine, 
facing the learner. 

The bar of the trapezium should be 2 feet 6 inches long and H inch in 
diameter, and suspended at a height of 4 feet 6 inches from the floor. 

First Series By the Ropes. 

Second Series By the Bar. 

Third Series Combinations. 



APPENDIX C. 



109 



TO RISE BY THE SINGLE ROPE. 

First Series. Position of attention, the trapezium in profile on the left 
Exercise 1. 1. Raise the right hand and grasp the rope a hand's breadth 

Course I. above the bar, the left following in the interspace (Fig. 1). 

Fig. 1. Fig. 2. Fig. 3. 

St 




2. Lift both feet from the ground, the legs straight and together, the toes 
pointed to the front, and pass them over the bar, elevating the body until the 
hip rests on its surface (Fig. 2) ; press downwards with the hands and rise 
seated on the bar, retaining the grasp of the rope (Fig. 3). 

In descending, lean slowly backwards and sidewards, bring the hip again 
on the bar, remove the lower limbs from it, and come to the first position. 

This exercise to be repeated with the trapezium on the right, the left hand 
uppermost. 

TO RISE BY BOTH ROPES. 



First Series. Position of attention, facing the trapezium. 
Exercise 2. 1. Raise both hands and grasp the ropes, 

Course I. one in each hand close to the bar. 

2. Lift both feet from the ground, and pass them under the 
bar between the hands, at the same time allowing the head 
and shoulders to fall backwards and straightening the arms . 
and by a continuous movement bend the back inwards, and 
extend the lower limbs upwards (Fig. 4), bending the arms 
until the hips are as high as the bar ; slowly let the feet 
descend to the front, and at the same time and at the same 
pace let the trunk, shoulders, and head ascend, and come to 
the seat on the bar, retaining the grasp. During this last 
movement let the chin be elevated, the shoulders pressed 
back, the breast advanced square to the front. 



Fig. 4. 




110 



APPENDIX C. 



In descending, lower the body from the bar backwards, let the lower limbs 
fall to the rear, re-pass the feet under the bar, and come to the first position. 

TO RISE BY THE BACK LIFT. 



First Series. Position as in second exercise. 

Exercise 3. 1. Raise the right hand to the reach and grasp the rope, 

•Course I. raise the left hand and grasp the bar at its centre. 

Fig. 5. Fig. 6. 2. Lift both feet from the 

ground, the toes pointed 
downwards, by the flexion of 
the right arm and the exten- 
sion of the left, and rise until 
the face is as high as the right 
hand, the left arm straight 
above the hand grasping the 
bar (Fig. 5) ; turn to the right, 
the back to the bar, and sit in 
the space between the left 
hand and the right rope (Fig. 
6), retaining the grasp. 

In descending, raise the 
body and return the face to 
the bar, lower the body slowly 
to the ground. 
This exercise to be repeated with the left hand on the rope. 




Fig. 7. 




TO RISE BY THE FRONT LIFT. 

First Series. Position as in second exercise. 

Exercise 4. 1. As in third exercise. 

Course II. 2. As in third exercise until the left 

arm is straight above the bar, Fig. 5 ; raise the feet and pass 
them over the bar through the space between the left hand 
and the right rope (Fig. 7), extend the legs, point the toes to 
the front, and come to the seat on the bar, retaining the 
grasp. 

In descending, withdraw the feet through the interspace, 
and slowly lower them to the ground. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand on the 
rope. 

TO TURN ROUND THE ROPES, RIGHT AND LEFT. 



First Series. 
Exercise 5. 
Course II. 



Position as in second exercise. 
As in third exercise. 
As in fourth exercise to the seat on the bar. 



I 



APPENDIX C. 



Ill 



3. Kaise the left hand from the bar and grasp 
the right rope as high as the face, slip the right 
hand down to the bar, and grasp it close to the 
rope with the thumb to the front, the fingers to 
the rear ; lift the body from the bar, pass round 
the outside of the right rope, the feet leading 
(Fig. 8), pass the lower limbs between the ropes, 
and again come to the seat on the bar. 

4. Repeat the movement round the left rope, 
reversing the respective positions of the hands. 

Descend as in fourth exercise. 

TO TURN ROUND THE BAR FORWARDS. 



Fig. 8. 




Second Sebies. Position as in second exercise. 

Exercise 6. 1. Raise both hands and grasp the bar, the hands at 

Course III. the distance, the backs of the hands upwards, the fingers 

and thumbs meeting ; extend the lower limbs to the front, at the same time 
sinking to the reach of the hands ; the legs together and straight, the feet 
together with the toes pointed to the front (Fig. 9). 

Fig. 9. Fig. 10. Fig. 11. 






2. Lift the feet from the ground, the lower limbs in position, the arms 
remaining perfectly straight, until the feet are as high as the bar (Fig. 10) ; 
bend the arms, and at the same time elevate the body until the waist is as 
high as the bar, pass the lower limbs over the bar, the trunk following, revolv- 
ing on the waist (Fig. 11), lower the body, completing the circle, and slowly 
descend until the feet meet the ground ; relinquish the grasp of the hands. 



112 



APPENDIX C. 



TO TURN ROUND THE BAR BACKWARDS. 



Fig. 13. 




Second Series. 
Exercise 7. 
Course III. 



Position as in 
second exercise. 
1. As in sixth 
exercise. 
2. As in sixth exercise, until the 
feet are as high as the bar (Fig. 10)^ 
pass the feet under the bar between 
the hands, and by a continuous 
movement bend the back inwards 
and extend the lower limbs upwards, 
bending the arms until the waist is 
as high as the bar (Fig. 12), let the 
lower half of the body slowly fall 
to the front, and as it descends let 
the upper half ascend in position, 
the head well thrown back, and sink slowly down, the back touching the bar 
(Fig. 13), until the feet meet the ground ; relinquish the grasp of the hands. 

TO TURN ROUND THE BAR BACKWARDS, AND RETURN. 

Second Series. Position as in second exercise. 

Exercise 8. 1. As in sixth exercise. 

Course III. 2. As in preceding exercise to its completion, but at 

this point, instead of relinquishing the grasp, press from the hands, straighten 

the arms, bending the back inwards, and rise to the seat on the bar ; slowly 

let the head and shoulders fall to the rear, repass the feet under the bar, 

straighten the legs, lower the body, and return to the first position. 

TO RISE ABOVE THE BAR, RIGHT AND LEFT. 



Fig. 14 



Fig. 15. 




Second Series. 
Exercise 9. 
Course III. 



Position as in 
second exercise. 
1. As in sixth 
exercise. 
2. Lift both feet from the ground, 
bend the arms until the breast is as 
high as the bar, press strongly with 
the right hand upon the bar and 
raise the fore-arm vertically above 
it (Fig. 14); repeat the movement 
with the left hand, complete the ex- 
tension of both arms, and come to 
the upright position, resting on the 
bar (Fig. 15). 

In descending, re-bend the right 
arm, and pass it below the bar, the 
left following, lower the body and come to the first position . 
This exercise to be repeated left and right. 



APPENDIX C 



113 



TO RISE ABOVE THE BAR, BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 



Second Series. Position as in second exercise. 

Exercise 10. 1. As in sixth exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Lift both feet from the ground, 

bend the arms until the breast is as high as the bar, 
press strongly upon the bar with both hands at once 
and rise above it (Fig. 16), completing the extension of 
the arms, and come to the upright position, resting on 
the bar, as in Fig. 15. 

This series of movements to be executed without 
pause, and at the same pace throughout. 

In descending, re-bend the arms, pass them below 
the bar, and come to the first position. 

TO TURN UNDER THE BAR ON ONE HAND. 



Fig. 16. 




Fig. 17. 



Fig. 18. 



Second Series. Position as 
Exercise 11. in second ex- 

Course IV. ercise. 

1 . As in sixth exercise. 

2. As in sixth exercise, until 
the feet are as high as the bar 
(Fig. 10) ; pass the feet under the 
bar between the hands, and let 
them descend close to the ground, 
but without touching it (Fig. 17) ; 
quit the grasp of the left hand, 
at the same time folding the 
lower limbs close under the body, 
and swinging round by the right, 
make a complete turn laterally, 
and again come to the front (Fig. 18), re-grasp the bar with the left hand, ex- 
tend the legs, again raise the feet to the bar and re-pass them under it, quit 
the grasp with the right hand, swinging round by the left, re-grasp the bar 
with the right hand, extend the legs and come to the first position. 

TO FORM THE STRAIGHT LINE. 




Second Series. Position as in 

Exercise 12. second exercise. 

Course IV. 1. As in sixth 

exercise . 
2. As in preceding exercise until 
the feet are passed under the bar, at 
this point extend the legs to the 
rear and pause, forming a perfectly 
horizontal line from head to foot, 
suspended by the arms under the 



Fig. 19. 




114 APPENDIX C 

bar (Fig. 19) relax the extension, re-pass the feet under the bar, extend 
the legs to the front, and come to the first position. 

THIRD SERIES. COMBINATIONS. 

The following exercises should be combined and executed without pause, as 
soon as the separate exercises composing them can be performed singly. 

COMBINATIONS OF TWO EXERCISES. 

Nos. 2-5. To rise by both ropes — to turn round the ropes, rieht and left. 
Nos. 4-5. To rise by the front lift — to turn round the ropes, right and left. 
Nos. 6-8. To turn round the bar forwards — to turn round the bar, back- 
wards and return. 
Nos. 6-10. To turn round the bar forwards — to rise above the bar, both 

hands at once. 
Nos. 6-11. To turn round the bar forwards — to turn under the bar on one 

hand. 
Nos. 6-12. To turn round the bar forwards — to form the straight line. 
Nos. 8-10. To turn round the bar backwards and return — to rise above the 

bar, both hands at once. 
Nos. 8-11. To turn round the bar backwards and return — to turn under the 

bar on one hand. 
Nos. 8-12. To turn round the bar backwards and return— to form the 

straight line. 
Nos. 10-11. To rise above the bar both hands at once — to turn under the bar 

on one hand. 
Nos. 11-12. To rise above the bar both hands at once— to form the straight 

line. 

COMBINATIONS OF THREE EXERCISES. 

Nos. 6-8-10. To turn round the bar forwards — to turn round the bar back- 
wards and return — to rise above the bar, both hands at once. 

Nos. 6-10-11. To turn round the bar forwards— to rise above the bar, both 
hands at once— to turn under the bar on one hand. 

Nos. 6-10-12. To turn round the bar forwards— to rise above the bar both 
hands at once— to form the straight line. 

Nos. 6-11-12. To turn round the bar forwards — to turn under the bar on one 
hand — to form the straight line. 

Nos. 10-8-12. To rise above the bar both hands at once — to turn round the 
bar backwards and return — to form the straight line. 

Nos. 8-11-12. To turn round the bar backwards and return — to turn on one 
hand under the bar — to form the straight line. 

Nos. 8-11-10. To turn round the bar backwards and return —to turn under 
the bar on one hand — to rise above the bar both hands at 
once. 



APPENDIX C. 



115 



COMBINATIONS OF FOUR EXERCISES. 

Nos. 6-8-10-11. To turn round the bar forwards— to turn round the bar 
backwards and return — to rise above the bar both hands 
at once — to turn under the bar on one hand. 

Nos. 6-10-11-12. To turn round the bar forwards — to rise above the bar both 
hands at one — to turn under the bar on one hand — to 
form the straight line. 

Nos, -8-10-6-12. To turn round the bar backwards and return — to rise above 
the bar both hands at once — to turn round the bar for- 
wards—to form the straight line. 

Nos. 10-8-11-6. To rise above the bar both hands at once— to turn round 
the bar backwards and return — to turn under the bar on 
one hand — to turn round the bar forwards. 

COMBINATIONS OF FIVE EXERCISES. 

Nos, 6-8-10-11-12. To turn round the bar forwards — to turn round the bar 
backwards and return — to rise above the bar both hands 
at once — to turn under the bar on one hand — to form 
the straight line. 

Nos. 8-10-6-11-12. To turn round the bar backwards and return— to rise 
above the bar both hands at once — to turn round the 
bar forwards — to turn under the bar on one hand — to 
form the straight line. 

Nos. 10-8-6-10-12. To rise above the bar both hands at once — to turn round 
the bar backwards and return — to turn round the bar 
forwards — to rise above the bar both hands at once — 
to form the straight line. 



THE PAIR OF RINGS. 

This machine is similar in character to the trapezium, giving a widetxrarse 
of exercises, passing from the most simple to the most arduous. Like the 
exercises of the trapezium, they powerfully address themselves to the trunk, 
especially its upper region, and to the arms. They all terminate on the spot, 
and in the position, in which they begin. They also may be divided into two 
series, although these are not so clearly denned as those of the first-named 
machine; the first series comprises all exercises of evolution, single or double, 
with arms bent or straight; the second, all those rising to, or above the rings. 

With this machine also, the exercises are all given in the text in their per- 
fect form, and allow of gradual approach through less difficult movements 
and positions. The first and second may be begun not only while standing 
upright and with the arms bent, but a spring may be taken with the feet to 
assist in the elevation of the lower limbs, and the knees may remain bent both 
in the ascent and descent, to front and rear ; these modifications of the exor- 
cise being gradually relinquished as the body acquires strength, until it can 
be executed in its perfect form. The first part of the third exercise maybe 



116 



APPENDTX C. 



similarly modified, but its distinguishing feature, that of turning the body 
while the feet remain in the rings, must always be executed slowly, the back 
sinking gradually, with every joint of the spine sharing equally in the depres- 
sion, and the chest gradually rounding and expanding under the same influence. 

In the second series, the first, second, and third exercises lead direct to each 
other, and these may be modified, first, by being begun from the erect stand- 
ing position, and next from the kneeling position. 

The last exercise is very difficult, and the same care and restrictions which 
are directed for the corresponding one on the trapezium are necessary here. 

In all evolutions on this machine the instructor should grasp the right wrist 
of the learner with one hand, and as soon as the feet have passed the rings, 
he should with the other govern the lower limbs in their descent. While the 
body is turning with the feet in the rings, the instructor should pass his left 
arm under the waist of the learner to limit the extent of its descent, always 
retaining his grasp of the wrist. In the turn with the hands (right and left) 
the instructor should grasp the right wrist rf the learner, and gradually lower 
him until his entire weight is on the left, and vice versa, always grasping the 
hand that is to relinquish the hold of the ring. 

The position of the instructor should be the same as with the trapezium. 

The Pair of Rings should be five inches in diameter, fixed eighteen inches 
apart, and suspended at a height of five feet six inches from the floor. 

First Series Evolutions. 

Second Series Rising Between the Rings. 

Third Series Combinations. 

THE SINGLE CIRCLE. 

First Series. Position of attention between the rings. 

Exercise 1. 1. Raise both hands and grasp the rings, one in each. 

Course I. hand, lower the body to the reach of the hands and pass 

Fig. 1. Fig. 2. Fig. 3. 




APPENDIX C. 11' 

both feet to the front, the legs together and straight, the feet together, the 
toes pointed to the front (Fig. 1). 

2. Lift both feet from the ground, and pass them between the rings, the 
arms and legs straight throughout (Fig. 2) ; slowly descend to the ground, 
completing the circle (Fig. 3), and relinquish the grasp. 

THE DOUBLE CIRCLE. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 2. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course I. 2. As in first exercise to the completion of the single 

circle, but instead of relinquishing the grasp of the hands, return between the 

rings and come to the first position, retaining the arms and legs straight 

throughout. Bend the arms, replace the feet upon the ground under the 

rings, and quit the grasp. 

TO TURN WITH THE FEET IN THE RINGS. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. Fig. 4. 

Exercise 3. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course I. 2. As in first exercise to the half- 

circle (the feet between the rings), separate the feet 
right and left and insert each in its respective ring. 

3. Resume with the trunk of the body the action of 
the circle, slowly separating the knees, lowering and 
arching the back and raising the head (Fig. 4). 

4. Re-raise the trunk to its position at the half- 
circle, remove the feet from the rings, straighten the 
legs, point the toes upwards and let them gradually 
descend to the front, the arms straight, and come to the first position. 

TO TURN ON ONE HAND RIGHT AND LEFT. 




First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 4- 1. As in first exercise. 

Course III. 2. As in first exercise to the com- 

pletion of the single circle, but instead of relinquish- 
ing the grasp with both hands, retain the grasp of the 
right, passing the left arm down by the side, and fold- 
ing the lower limbs under the body. 

3. Make a complete turn laterally from left to right, 
re-grasp the ring with the left hand (Fig. 5), and extend 
the lower limbs to the front as in first position, 

4. Re-pass the feet between the rings, repeat the 
turn from right to left retaining the grasp of the left 
hand, re-grasp the ring with the right, extend the lower 
limbs to the front and come to the position. 



Fig. 5. 




118 



APPENDIX C. 



TO EXTEND THE ARMS RIGHT AND LEFT. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise* 

Exercise 5 . 1. As in first exercise. 

Course II. 2. Bend the arms until 

the hands are at the rest, raising the lower limbs 
in position ; sustain the body on the left hand 
(retaining it close by the side), extend the right 
arm holding the ring at the full length of the 
arm (Fig. 6), pause, and return the right hand to 
the side ; repeat the extension with the left arm, 
pause, return it to the side, lower the body and 
come to the position. 

TO RISE ABOVE THE RINGS RIGHT AND LEFT. 




Fig. 7. 



Fig. 8. 





Second Series. 
Exercise 6. 

Course III. 



Position as in 
first exercise. 

1. As in first 
exercise. 
2. Bend the arms until the hands 
are at the rest, raising the lower limbs 
in position, press strongly on the ring 
with the right palm, raising the fore- 
arm vertically above the ring (Fig. 7), 
repeat the movement on the left, press 
strongly with both hands, straighten 
the arms completely above the rings 
and pause (Fig. 8); the chest fully 
advanced, the head held back, the chin 
elevated, the legs straight and together, 
the toes pointed to the ground. 
In descending, re-bend the right arm, 
the left following, re-pass the right below the ring, the left following, lower 
the body and come to the position. 
This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading. 

TO RISE ABOVE THE RINGS BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 7. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course IV. 2. As in preceding exercise until the hands are at the 

rest, instantly press strongly on the rings with both hands, and raise both 

arms vertically above the rings (Fig. 9), and rise above the rings to the full 

extension of the arms (Fig. 10) ; the transition from the bent to the extended 

position of the arms taking place without pause. 

In descending, re-bend both arms at once, pass them below the rings, lower 
the body and come to the position. 



Fig. 9. 



APPENDIX C. 

Fig. 10. Fig. 11 



119 



Fig. 12. 





Fig. 13. 



Fig. 14. 



TO RISE ABOVE THE RINGS BACKWARDS, RIGHT AND LEFT. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 8. 1. As in first exercise. 

Coubse IV. 2. As in first exercise to the completion of the single 

circle ; elevate the right side, lean slightly forward, press strongly with the 

right hand, and raise the fore-arm vertically above the riDg (Fig. 11), repeat 

the movement on the left, press strongly with both hands, and rise above the 

rings as in seventh exercise (Fig. 12). 

Descend as in seventh exercise. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading. 

TO RISE ABOVE THE RINGS BACKWARDS, BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

Second Series Position as in 

Exercise 9 . first exercise. 

Course IV. 1. As in first 

exercise. 
2. Lift both feet from the ground 
and pass them between the rings, 
and at the same time rapidly bend 
the arms, raising the body between 
the rings until the hands are close 
at the sides, instantly press with 
both hands and raise the fore-arms 
vertically above the rings (Fig. 13), 
straighten the arms, continue the 
movement of the circle with the 
lower limbs, and let the body rise 
between the rings in the position of 
seventh exercise (Fig. 14). 





120 APPENTOX C. 

TO POEM THE STRAIGHT LINE BACKWARDS. 



Fig. 15. 




Second Series. 
Exercise 10. 
Course IV. 



Position asin 
first exercise. 
1. As in first 



exercise. 

2. As in first exercise to the half 
circle (Fig. 2), but instead of lower- 
ing the feet to the ground, extend 
them to the rear until the lower 
limbs and trunk form one perfect 
horizontal line (Fig. 15). 

Relax the extension of the lower 
limbs, let the feet descend to the 
rear, and come to the position. 



TO FORM THE STRAIGHT LINE FORWARDS. 

Fig. 16. Second Series. Position as in 

Exercise 11. first exercise. 

Course IV. 1. Raise both 

hands and grasp the rings; raise the 
lower limbs to the front in position, 
the toes pointed to the front, and al- 
lowing the head and shoulders to fall 
to the rear, the arms slightly bent, un- 
til the lower limbs and trunk form one 
perfect horizontal line (Fig. 16). 
Relax the-extension, let the feet descend to the ground and come to the 
position. 




Fig. 17. 




TO STAND ABOVE THE RINGS. 



Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 12. 1. Rise above the rings as in seventh 

Course IV. exercise (Figs. 9 and 10). 

2. Incline the head and shoulders to the front, bending the 
arms and pressing them close in by the sides, and at the same 
time raise the lower limbs in position by the rear until they 
are above the head, forming with the trunk of the body one 
perfect vertical line between the rings (Fig. 17). 

Relax the extension, bring the lower limbs down by the 
front to the ground and come to the position. 



APPENDIX C. 



121 



TO STAND BELOW THE RINGS. 

Second Series. Position as in first 

Exercise 13. exercise. 

Course IV. 1. Rise above the 

rings as in seventh exercise (Figs. 9 and 

10). 

2. Slowly let the whole body descend in 
position between the rings, at the same 
time extending the arms perfectly straight 
right and left, strongly pressing down- 
wards with the palms, until the arms are 
at right angles with the body (Fig. 18) ; 
relax the extension and slowly lower the 
feet to the ground, and come to the posi- 
tion. 



THIRD SERIEi. 



Fig. 18. 




COMBINATIONS. 

When all or most of these exercises can be performed singly, two, three, or 
more of them should be combined and executed without pause. The follow- 
ing are some of the combinations which may be made, and others can be 
formed at discretion. 

COMBINATIONS OF TWO EXERCISES. 

Nos. 2-5. The double circle— to turn with the feet in the rings. 

Nos. 2-4. The double circle— to turn on one hand right and left. 

Nos. 2-6 or 7. The double circle — to rise above the rings backwards. 

Nos. 2-8. The double circle — to rise above the rings. 

Nos. 2-10. The double circle— to form the straight line backwards. 

COMBINATIONS OF THREE EXERCISES, 



Nos. 2-4-5. The double circle — to turn on one hand right and left — to extend 

the arms right and left. 
Nos. 2-7-4. The double circle — to rise above the rings — to turn on one hand 

right and left. 
Nos. 2-8-7. The double circle — to rise above the rings backwards — to rise 

above the rings both hands at once. 
Nos. 2-7-12. The double circle— to rise above the rings both hands at once — 

to form the straight line above the rings. 



r 

122 APPENDIX C. 

COMBINATIONS OF FOUR EXERCISES. 

Nos. 2-7-4-10. The double circle — to rise above the rings both hands at 
once— to turn on one hand right and left— to form the 
straight line. 

Nos. 2-7-12-3. The double circle — to rise above the rings both hands at 
once — to form the straight line above the rings — to turn 
with the feet in the rings. 

Nos. 7-12-2-10. To rise above the rings — to form the straight line above the 
rings — the double circle — to form the straight line back- 
wards. 

COMBINATIONS OF FIVE EXERCISES. 

Nos. 2-7-4^10-12. The double circle— to rise above the rings both hands at 
once — to turn on one hand right and left — to form the 
straight line backwards— to form the straight line above 
the rings. 

Nos. 7-12-3-5-11. To rise above the rings both hands at once— to form the 
straight line above the rings— to turn with the feet in the 
rings — to extend the arms right and left— to form the 
straight line forwards. 



THE ROW OF RINGS. 

The single exercise on this machine is a very simple one, and if the proper 
elevation of the rings from the floor be preserved, it may be safely practiced 
without supervision, or at most with that of a monitor. It is not the less val- 
uable on this account, but, on the contrary, it has a special object which it 
shares with the exercises of the next machine, viz., the equalization in strength 
and development of the two sides of the upper half of the bcdy, and of the 
arms ; for it necessitates that only one side can work at a time, and that the 
amount of exertion will be the same for each side, and that therefore the 
weaker side will actually do more, being the weaker, and consequently by the 
unerring law of development being in relation to activity, it will in time over- 
take and rank with its fellow in development and capacity. 

The row of rings should consist of not less than five or six rings similar to 
those described for the preceding machine, and there may with advantage be 
a greater number, if the length of the gymnasium will admit of it. They 
should be suspended at a height of not less than six feet three inches from the 
floor, and at equal distances apart, the distances in each case depending on 
the facilities offered by the building for attaching the ropes ; but the distance 
apart should not be less than eight feet or more than ten feet, and the point 
to which the ropes are hung should never exceed twenty feet above the floor. 



APPENDIX C. 



12a 



SINGLE SERIES. 

THE SWING. 

Single Series. Position of attention", facing the first ring, the back to- 

Single Exercise, the row. v * 

Course II. 1. "Raise the left hand and grasp the ring (Fig. 1), 

advance with short and rapid steps and spring from the ground at the end of 
the run, from the left foot, turn quickly to the right, bending the lower limbs 



Fig.l. 



Fig. 2. 




at the knees and pointing the toes to the rear, 
advanced (Fig. 2); on approaching the 
second ring extend the right hand and 
grasp it, and, while retaining it lightly in 
the hand, return to the farthest point of 
the backward oscillation on the ring 
grasped by the left (Fig. 3) ; at this point 
quit the grasp of the left, withdrawing 
the hand lightly and leaving the ring 
motionless, turn to the right and bring 
the left hand in a full sweep round by the 
thigh, the arm quit straight and fingers 
pointed downwards, describing a half 
circle in the sweep, extend it to the front, 
and grasp the next ring. Repeat. On 
grasping the last ring turn quickly round, 
facing the row, and descend yielding. 



the head erect, the breast 
Fig. 3. 




124 



APPENDIX C. 



THE ELASTIC LADDER. 

The exercises on this machine resemble in character that on the row of 
rings, and have the same object, i. e., the equalization of the arms and upper 
part of the body ; they are two in number, the second being but a more 
advanced and dexterous mode of performing the first. They are several 
degrees more difficult than that on the row of rings, the machine being firm, 
and the whole weight of the descent in the oscillation coming upon the sus- 
taining hand. They are, however, always favorites, and when the ladder is 
well arranged and perfectly secure in its vertical straps and horizontal fasten 
ings, and a class of men pass along it, each taking the spar as it is relin- 
quished by his predecessor, there is no more effective exercise in the Gymna- 
sium. 

Short distances, consisting of a few spars only, should be attempted at first, 
and with beginners only one should be passed along the ladder at a time, the 
instructor walking by his side, giving directions and explanations as each step 
is made. 

The elastic ladder should be suspended at a height of eight feet six inches 
from the floor ; the width of the ladder should be fifteen inches, the spars 
nine inches apart. It may be of any length beyond thirty feet. 

SINGLE SERIES. 

THE SINGLE STEP. 

Single Series. Position of attention under the ladder, facing the stand- 

Exercise 1. ard. 

Course III. 1. Ascend to the step and with the right hand grasp 

the first spar, the fingers and thumb meeting, face to the left, lean forward, 
fully extend the left arm and grasp the spar nearest the hand, the palm facing 
the range of the ladder (Fig. 1). 

Fig. 1. Fig. 2. 




APPENDIX C. 



125 



2, Lift both feet from the step, and in their fall let them swing as far as 
the advanced hand, the head erect, the legs straight and together, the toes 
pointed to the ground ; on the return oscillation towards the right, quit the 
grasp with the right hand, and bring it m full sweep (the arm quite straight) 
round by the thigh (the body turning at the same time), extend it to the front 
and grasp the nearest spar (Fig. 2) ; again let the trunk and lower limbs fal* 
to the rear until they are under the left hand (as shown by dotted lines on 
Fig. 2), quit the grasp with the left hand, pass it round by the thigh (the body 
turning), and complete the movements of the step. Repeat. 

At the completion of the last step, steady the body, bring it to the vertical 
position, quit the grasp with both hands, and descend yielding. 



THE DOUBLE STEP. 

Position as in preceding exercise. 

1. As in preceding exercise. 

2. As in preceding exercise to the forward oscillation, 



Fig. 3. 



Single Series. 
Exercise 2. 
Course IV. 

but instead of retaining the grasp 
of the left hand while the right 
passes to another spar, quit the 
grasp of the left (Fig.3),thus allow- 
ing the forward oscillation to ena- 
ble the right hand to grasp a spar 
in advance of that which it could 
have grasped had the left retained 
its hold ; the exercise thus con- 
sisting of a succession of leaps, 
without pause, only one hand 
ever being on the ladder at one 
time, and towards the terminat- 
ing movement of each step, both 
hands being free (Fig. 3). Re- 
peat. 

On grasping the last spar, sweep the disengaged hand rapidly round by the 
thigh, make a complete turn with the body, quit the grasp and descend yield- 
ing. 




THE HORIZONTAL BAR. 



The exercises on this machine are very valuable, for two distinct reasons ; 
first from their own intrinsic value ; second, from the circumstance that they 
are capable of being executed by an entire class at the same time, all obeying 
the same word of command. They naturally divide themselves into two 
series, the first consisting of all those on the bar in its natural form, rankin g 
hx character and value with those of the two last-mentioned machines ; the 



126 



APPENDIX C. 



second, of all those in which the body is elevated up to and above the bar, 
by the flexion and extension of the arms ; the learner rising either on the side 
on which he began the exercise, or passing round the bar by the action of the 
trunk, and resting on its surface. These resemble in nature and purpose cer- 
tain exercises of the second series on the trapezium. 

As is always the case with exercises performed by a number of men at the 
same time, a stricter discipline must be preserved, with a closer observance of 
time. The more complex exercises should all be practiced by the learners 
separately. 

The position of the instructor should vary. In the first series it should be 
as with the two last machines ; in the second series, as with the correspond- 
ing exercises on the trapezium, except when executed by a class, when it 
should be to the front, and opposite the centre of the bar. 

The horizontal bar should be of wrought iron H inch in diameter, and fixed 
at a height of eight feet from the floor. It may be of any length beyond 20 
feet. 

First Series Travelling. 

Second Series Rising to and Above the Bar. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING. 



First Series. Position of attention facing the bar. 

Exercise 1. 1. Spring from the ground and grasp the bar, the 

Course I. hands at the distance, the fingers and thumbs together, 

Fig. 1. the arms straight, the trunk of the body 

upright, the legs straight and together, 

the feet together, the toes pointed to the 

ground. 

2. Advance the right hand to its farth- 
est reach along the bar, at the same time 
passing the lower limbs in position to the 
left until the feet are under the left hand 
(Fig. 1) ; quit the grasp of the left hand 
and immediately pass it along the bar to 
the right, at the same time allowing the 
lower limbs and trunk to swing to the 
right until they are under the right hand, 
again advance the right hand to the reach 
and repeat the movements of the step. 

Repeat. 
On the completion of the last step, resume the first position, quit the grasp 

with both hands, and descend yielding. 
This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading. 




APPENDIX C. 



127 



RIGHT AND LEFT. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 2. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course II. 2. Advance the right hand to its farthest reach along 

the bar, at the same time pass the lower limbs in position to the left until the 

feet are under the left hand (Fig. 2), quit the grasp of the left hand, letting 

Fig. 2. Fig. 3. 




ithe body and lower limbs fall to the left, let the left hand sweep round by 
the thigh in a half circle, and grasp the bar at a full reach beyond the right, 
at the same time making a complete turn of the body, and continuing the 
oscillation of the lower limbs until the feet are under the left hand (Fig. 3). 
Again pass the lower limbs to the left, quit the grasp of the right hand and 
complete the movements of the step. Repeat. 
Descend as in first exercise. 

RIGHT AND LEFT, BACKWARDS. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 3. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course II. 2. Advance the right hand to its farthest reach along 

the bar, quit the grasp of the left hand, but instead of passing it round by the 

front, as in preceding exercise, let it fall by the rear and grasp the bar at the 

full reach beyond the right, the body making a complete turn backwards 

during the step . Repeat with the left and right alternately. 

Descend as in first exercise. 

This exercise to be repeated turning backwards and forwards-at alternate 
^steps. 



128 



APPENDIX C. 



Fig. 4. 




RIGHT HAND LEADING. 

(the arms bent.) 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 4. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course II. 2. Bend the arms to the half reach, 

the chin rising above the bar (Fig. 4), advance the left 

hand up to the right, advance the right the distance of the 

step, retaining the trunk and lower limbs in position. 

Repeat. 

At the completion of the last step, sink to the extension 
of the arms, and descend yielding. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

(the arms bent.) 
First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 5. t. As in first exercise. 

Course II. 2. Bend the arms to the half reach, 

the chin rising above the bar, spring from both hands at once the distance of 
the step, retaining the arms bent and the trunk and lower limbs in position. 
Repeat. 
Descend as in preceding exercise. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING, SIDEWAYS. 

(the legs pendent.) 

FrRST^SERTES. Position of attention, facing 

Exercise 6. the line of the bar. 

Course I. 1. Spring from the ground 

and grasp the bar with both hands, the right in 
advance of, but close to the left, the fingers and 
thumbs meeting ; bend the arms until the head rises 
above the bar on the right side, and the left shoul- 
der is immediately under the bar, the lower limbs 
straight and together and the toes pointed down- 
wards (Fig. 5). 

2. Advance the right hand the distance of the 
step, the left following, retaining the trunk and 
lower limbs in position. Repeat. 

At the completion of the last step, sink to the 
extension of the arms, and descend yielding. 

This exercise to be repeated with the. left hand leading, the head on the left 
of the bar. 




APPENDIX C 



129 



HAND OVER HAND, SIDEWAYS. 

(the legs pendent.) 

First Series. Position as in sixth exercise. 

Exercise 7. 1. As in sixth exercise. 

Course H. 2. Pass the left hand over the right the distance of 

the step, advancing the body until the right breast is at the right arm, pass 
the right hand over the left, advancing the body until the left breast is at the 
left arm. Repeat, retaining the trunk and lower limbs in position through- 
out. 
Descend as in sixth exercise. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE, SIDEWAYS. 

(the legs pendent.) 

First Series. Position as in sixth exercise. 

Exercise 8. 1. As in sixth exercise. 

Course IH. 2. Spring to the front with both hands at once the dis- 

tance of the step, retaining the trunk and lower limbs in position. Repeat. 
Descend as in sixth exercise. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING, SIDEWAYS. 



(the legs bent.) 

First Series. Position as in sixth exercise. 

Exercise 9. 1. As in sixth exercise, except that the 

Course I. lower limbs are bent at the knee, the 

feet to the rear, the toes pointed to the rear (Fig. 6.) 

2. Advance the right hand the distance of the step, the 
left following, retaining the trunk and lower limbs in posi- 
tion. Repeat. 

At the completion of the last step, sink to the extension 
of the arms, lower the feet, and descend yielding. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading, 
the head on the left of the bar. 

HAND OYER HAND, SIDEWAFS. 



Fig. 6. 




(the legs bent.) 

First Series. Position as in sixth exercise. 

Exercise 10. 1. As in ninth exercise . 

Course II. 2. Pass the left hand over the right the distance of the 

step, pass the right hand over the left the same distance, retaining the trunk 
and lower limbs in position . Repeat. 
Descend as in ninth exercise. 
9a 



130 



APPENDIX C 



Fibst Series 
Exercise 1 1 . 
Course III. 



Fig. 7. 




BOTH HANDS AT ONCE, SIDEWAYS. 
(the legs bent.) 

Position as in sixth exercise. 

1. As in ninth exercise. 

2. Spring to the front with both hands at once the dis- 
tance of the step, retaining the trunk and lower limbs in position. Repeat. 

Descend as in ninth exercise. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING, SIDEWAYS. 

(the legs up.) 

First Series. Position as in sixth 

Exercise 12. exercise. 

Course III. 1. As in sixth exer- 

cise, except that the lower limbs are ex- 
tended to the front in a horizontal line 
under the bar, the column of the body held 
firm and upright, the head held back (Fig. 
7). 
2. Advance the right hand the distance 
of the step, the left following, retaining the trunk and lower limbs in position. 
Repeat. 

At the completion of the last step, sink to the extension of the arms, lower 
the feet, and descend yielding. 
This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading. 

HAND OYER HAND, SIDEWAYS. 

(the legs up.) 

First Series. Position as in sixth exercise. 

Exercise 13. 1. As in twelfth exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Pass the left hand over the right the distance of the 

step, pass the right hand over the left the same distance, retaining the trunk 
and lower limbs in position. Repeat. 
Descend as in twelfth exercise. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE, SIDEWAYS. 

(the legs up.) 

First Series. Position as in sixth exercise. 

Exercise 14. 1. As in twelfth exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Spring to the front with both hands at once the dis- 

tance of the step, retaining the trunk and lower limbs in position. Repeat. 
Descend as in twelfth exercise. 



APPENDIX C. 



131 



TO RISE ABOVE THE BAR, THE RIGHT LEG ACTING. 

Second Series. Position as in sixth exercise. 

ExdrcUe 15- 1. Spring from the ground and grasp the bar with both 

Course II. hands, right and left of the bar, the left in advance, the 

fingers and thumbs meeting. 

2. Bend the arms, lift the lower limbs, separating the feet as they rise, pass 
the left leg over the bar, resting on it under the knee, pass the right leg over 
the left, the calf of the right overlying the instep of the left, the head held 
back, the trunk sustained. 

3. Quit the grasp of the right hand, pass it under the bar to the opposite 
side next the body and grasp the bar, elevate the elbow and rest the fore-arm 
along the bar (Fig. 8) ; detach the right leg from the left, straighten it and 

Fig. 8. Fig. 9. 




rapidly pass it under the bar, with a momentum sufficient to enable the body 
to rise above it, press strongly with both hands, extend the arms, advance the 
left leg, and rest above the bar (Fig. 9). 

In descending, re-bend the right arm, draw back the left leg, lower the 
body, and place the right leg over the left as in the ascent ; sustain the body, 
detach the legs from the bar, straighten the arms, and descend yielding. 

This exercise" to be repeated with the left leg acting, the right hand in 
advance, the right leg resting on the bar. 



TO TURN ROUND THE BAR. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exarci»e 16. 1. As in first exercise, the fingers 

Course IH. and thumb meeting. 

2. Lift the lower limbs in position to the front until the 
feet are as high as the bar, retaining the arms straight 
(Fig. 10); bend the arms, carry the feet and lower limbs 
over the bar, letting the upper part of the body pass under 
and up the side of the bar and over its surface, while the, 
lower part ascends, passes its surface, and descends to the* 
rear, until the whole body has cleared the bar, and rests in 



Fig. 10. 




132 



APPENDIX C. 



a perfectly vertical line on the hands, above the bar, the arms extended. 
In descending, set the body free from the bar, straighten the arms, and 
descend yielding. 

TO TURN ROUND THE BAR, THE HANDS REVERSED. 

Fig. 11. Second Series. Position as in 

Exercise 17. first exercise. 

Course III. 1. As in preced- 

ing exercise, but with the grasps of the 
hands reversed. 

2. As in preceding exercise, retaining 
the reversed grasp of the hands. 

In descending, bring the elbows close 
in by the sides, tighten the grasp of the 
hands, slowly incline the head and shoulders to the front, elevate the lower 
limbs to the rear, sustaining the body upon the fore-arms (Fig. 11) ; return 
over the bar, passing the body again under it, bring the lower limbs to the 
vertical line, and descend yielding. 




Fig. 12. 



Fig. 13. 



TO RISE TO THE BAR. 





Second Series. 
Exercise 18. 
Course I. 



Position as in first 
exercise. 

1. As in sixteenth 

exercise (Fig. 12). 

2. Bend the arms, raising the body until 

the chin rises above the bar (Fig. 13), sink 

again to the full extension of the arms, 

quit the grasp, and descend yielding. 

This exercise to be repeated with the 
lower limbs extended horizontally to the 
front. 

This exercise should be carried into the 
second, third, and fourth courses by rising 
to the bar three, six, nine, twelve, or more 
times consecutively and without pause, ac- 
cording to the capacity of the learner. 



TO RISE TO THE BAR, THE HANDS REVERSED. 



Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 10. 1. As in preceding exercise, except that the grasp of the 

Course I. hands is reversed. 

2. As in preceding exercise. 
This exercise to be repeated and varied as directed for preceding exercise. 



APPENDIX C. 133 

TO EISE ABOVE THE BAR BY THE FORE-ARM, RIGHT AND LEFT. 



Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 20. 1. As m sixteenth exercise. 

Course II. 2. Bend the arms until the 

chin rises above the bar, raise the right elbow and 
extend the fore-arm along the surface of the bar, the 
left following on the left (Fig. 14), press strongly 
with the hands, straighten the right arm to its full 
extension, the left following, and remain sustained 
by the hands, in the vertical line above the bar. 

In descending, let the left fore-arm return to the 
bar, the right following, pass the left beneath the 
bar, the right following, quit the grasp, and descend 
yielding. 



TO RISE ABOVE THE BAR BY THE FORE-ARM, 

AT ONCE. 



Fig. 14. 




BOTH HANDS 



Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 21. 1. As in preceding exercise. 

Course H. 2. Bend the arms as in preceding exercise, raise both 

elbows and extend the fore-arms along the surface of the bar, press strongly 

with the hands, straighten both arms to their full extension, and rise above 

the bar as in preceding exercise. 

In descending, let both fore-arms slowly return to the bar, pass both arms 
beneath the bar, quit the grasp and descend yielding. 

TO RISE ABOVE THE BAR, RIGHT AND LEFT. 



Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 22. 1. As in sixteenth exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Bend the arms until the 

chin rises above the bar, and raise the elbow verti- 
cally above the bar (Fig. 15), the left following, 
straighten both arms to their full extension, and 
rise above the bar in the vertical line, as in preced- 
ing exercise. 

In descending, re-bend the left arm, the right fol- 
lowing, let the left sink below the bar, the right fol- 
lowing, straighten the arms, and descend yielding. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading. 



Fig. 15. 




134 



APPENIDX C. 



TO RISE ABOVE THE BAR, BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 



Second Series. Position as in 

Exercise 23. first exercise. 

Course IV. 1. As in six- 

teenth exercise. 
2. Bend the arms until the chin 
rises above the bar, and without 
pause press strongly upon the bar 
with both hands at once, continue 
the upward movement and rise 
above it (Fig. 16), immediately com- 
pleting the extension of the arms, 
and sustain the body, on the hands, 
in the vertical line above the bar 
(Pig. 17). This series of movements 
to be executed without pause and at 
the same pace throughout. 
In descending, slowly re-bend the arms, sink beneath the bar, quit the 
grasp, and descend yielding. 

TO RISE ABOVE THE BAR BACKWARDS, RIGHT AND LEFT. 




Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

EacercUe 24. 1. As in sixteenth exercise, but the grasp of the right 

Course IV. hand reversed. 

2. Raise the lower limbs by the front in position until the feet are as high 
as the bar, pass the feet under the bar, between the hands, straighten the 
lower limbs and let them descend by the rear (Fig. 18), elevate the right side 

Fig. 18. Fig. 19. Fig. 20. 





APPENDIX C. 



135 



of the body, bringing it close up by the bar, and pressing strongly with the 
right hand until the fore-arm is straight above the bar, slackening but not 
quitting the grasp of the left hand (Fig. 19) ; support the weight of the body 
entirely on the right arm, quit the grasp of the left hand and re-grasp the bar 
at the distance beyond the right, at the same time turning the breast fully 
round to the bar, and resting equally on both hands (Fig. 20). 

In descending, reverse the movements of the ascent, or descend as in 
twenty-third exercise. 

This exercise to be repeated, left and right. 

TO RISE ABOVE THE BAR BACKWARDS, BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 25. 1. As in sixteenth exercise, but the grasp of both 

Course IV* hands reversed. 

2. As in preceding exercise to the elevation of the right fore-arm above the 
bar ; from this point instead of quitting the grasp of the left hand, elevate the 
left side and raise the fore-arm above the bar, press strongly from both hands 
and rise seated on the bar. 

In descending, reverse the movements of the ascent. 



TO ENCIRCLE THE BAR. 

Second Series. Position as in first 

Exercise 26. . exercise . 

Course IV. 1. Spring from the 

ground and grasp the bar with both hands, 
the fingers and thumbs meeting, bend the 
arms and instantly shoot the lower limbs 
and the whole column of the body to the 
front, over the bar (Fig. 21), continue the 
circle lowering the body by the rear, quit 
the grasp, and descend yielding. 

The following exercises on the trapezium 
may also be executed on this machine. 
Exercise 8. To turn round the bar back- 
wards and return. 
Exercise 9. To turn under the bar on one 
hand. (The lower limbs 
being retained in the verti- 
cal line instead of being 
folded under the body.) 
Exercise 12. To form the straight line. 

Combinations of the exercises of the 
second series on this machine may also be 
formed on the same principle as the com- 
binations on the trapezium. 



Fig. 21 




136 



APPENDIX C. 



THE PLANK. 

There is no machine more simple than this, and none which may be made 
more directly and practically useful. All its exercises are of a simple kind, 
requiring and giving in their practice suppleness rather than strength. 

The plank should be 14 inches wide and 1£ inch thick. Its length may vary 
from 14 feet to 20 feet ; its inclination should be frequently varied. 

First Series With Hands and Feet. 

Second Series With Bands and Knees. 

Third Series With the Legs Suspended. 

Fourth Series With the Hands Only. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING. 

First Series. Position of attention, facing the plank, the toes touch- 

Exercise 1 . ing it. 

Course 1. 1. Lean forward, raise the right hand and grasp the edge 

Fig. 1. of the plank at the half reach, the left follow- 

ing on the left, the fingers under, the thumbs 
above and pointed upwards ; lift the right 
foot from the ground, and place it on the 
plank, lift the left foot and place it beside 
the right, the legs straight, the feet flat upon 
the plank, the arms straight and firm, the 
head held back, the eyes directed to the reach 
of the hands (Fig. 1). 

2. Raise the right hand to the reach, the 
left following on the left ; incline the body to 
the front, draw up the right foot the distance 
of the step, the left following on the left. Repeat. 

In descending, slip down the right foot the distance of the step, the left fol- 
lowing on the left, slip down the right hand, the left following on the left. 
Repeat. 
This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading. 




RIGHT SIDE LEADING. 



Fig. 2. 




First Series. Position as in first 

Exercise 2. exercise. 

Course I. 1. As in first exer- 

cise. 
2. Slightly incline the body to the left, 
raise the right hand to the reach, and at 
the same time lift the right foot the dis- 
tance of the step (Fig. 2) ; slightly incline 
the body to the right, raise the left hand 
to the reach opposite the right and at the 
same time lift the left foot and place it 
beside the right. Repeat. 



APPENDIX C. 



137 



In descending, slip the right hand down the distance of the step and at 
the same time slip the right foot down the same distaace ; the left hand and 
left foot following together on the left. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left side leading. 

RIGHT AND LEFT SIDE. 



First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 3. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course I. 2. Slightly incline the body to the left, raise the right 

hand to the reach, and at the same time lift the right foot the distance of the 

step, as in Fig. 2 ; incline the body to the right, raise the the left hand and left 

foot the distance of the step beyond the right hand and right foot. Repeat the 

step with the left hand and foot, passing the right. 

In descending, slip down the leading hand and foot the distance of the step 
below the supporting hand and foot. Repeat. 

RIGHT AND LEFT, HAND AND FOOT. 

ITirst Series. Position as in first ex- Fig. 3. 

Exercise 4. ercise. 

Course I. 1. As in first exercise. 

2. Raise the right hand a short step, 
and at the same time lift the left foot the 
same distance (Fig. 3), raise the left hand 
the distance of the step beyond the right, 
and at the same time lift the right foot be- 
yond the left. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the leading hand and 
foot down a short step, below the support- 
ing hand and foot. Repeat. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 5- 1. Lean forward, raise both hands and grasp the edges of 

Course II. the plank as in first exercise, lift both feet and place them 

on the plank, then rest the body as in first exercise. 

2. Shoot up both hands to the reach, inclining the body to the front, draw 
up both feet the distance of the step. Repeat. 

In descending, slip down both feet the distance of the step, bring the hands 
down the same distance. Repeat. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 6. 1. Lean forward and grasp the plank as in first exercise; 

Course II. lift the right leg and place the knee upon the plank, the 




138 



APPENDIX C. 



front of the leg from the knee to the point of the toes resting on its surface,. 



the left following on the left, the head held 
back, the arms at the half reach (Fig. 4). 

2. Raise the right hand to the reach, the 
left following on the left; raise the riffht knee 
the distance of the step, the left following. 
Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right knee down 
the distance of the step, the left following; 
slip the right hand down the same distance; 
the left following. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left 
hand leading. 

RIGHT SIDE LEADING. 



Fig. 4 



Second Series 
Exercise 7. 
Coubse II. 



Position as in first 
exercise. 

1. As in sixth ex" 
ercise. 
2. Raise the right hand to the the reach, 
and at the same time lift the right knee 
the distance of the step (Fig 5) ; raise the 
left hand to the reach opposite the right, 
and at the same time lift the left knee and 
place it beside the right. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down 
the distance of the step, and at the same 
time slip the right knee down the same 
distance, the left hand and left knee fol- 
lowing together on the left. Repeat. 
This exercise to be repeated with the left side leading. 

RIGHT AND LEFT SIDE. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 8. 1. As in sixth exercise. 

Course II. 2. Raise the right hand to the reach and at the same 

time lift the right knee the distance of the step as in Fig. 5; raise the left hand 

and left knee the distance of the step beyond the right hand and right knee. 

Repeat the step with the left hand and foot, passing the right. 

In descending, slip down the leading hand and knee the distance of the step 
below the supporting hand and foot. Repeat. 




APPENDIX C. 



18fr 



RIGHT AND LEFT, HAND AND KNEE. 



Fig. 6. 




Second Series. Position as in first ex- 

Exercise 9. ercise. 

Course II. 1. As in sixth exercise. 

2 . Raise the right hand a short step, and at 
the same time lift the left knee the same dis- 
tance (Fig. 6); raise the left hand the distance 
of the step beyond the right, and at the same 
time lift the right knee beyond the left. Re- 
peat. 

In descending*, slip the leading hand and 
knee down a short step, below the supporting 
hand and knee. Repeat. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 



Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 10. 1. Lean forward, raise both hands and grasp the edges^ 

Course HI. of the plank, as in sixth exercise, lift both feet and place 

the knees upon the plank as in sixth exercise. 

2. Shoot up both hands to the reach, set the legs free from the plank, and 
draw up both knees the distance of the step. Repeat. 

In descending, set the legs free from the plank and slip down both knees the 
distance of the step, briDg the hands down the same distance. Repeat. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE, THE LEGS SUSPENDED. 

Third Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 11 • 1. Raise both hands and grasp the plank as in preceding 

Course IV. exercise ; lift both legs from the ground and pass them 

right and left over the plank, resting on the edge of it under the knee, the 
fore-legs pendent on either side, the arms bent, the trunk of the body sus- 
tained, the head held back (Fig. 7). 

Fig. 7. Fig. 8. 




140 



APPENDIX C 



2. Lean forward and shoot up both hands to the reach (Fig. 8), raise the 
lower limbs the same district. Repeat. 

In descending pass the lower limbs down the distance of the step, lower 
the hands. Repeat. 

THE RIGHT HAND LEADING. 



Fourth Series. 
Exercise 12. 
■Course III. 
Fig. 9. 



Position as in first exercise. 

1. Lean forward and with the right hand at the reach 
grasp the edge of the plank, the left following on the 
Fig. 10. left, the column of the body aligned down 
the centre of the plank, the head slightly 
bent back, the legs straight and together, the 
toes pointed downwards, the surface of the 
feet resting on the plank (Fig. 9). 

2. Bend the arms and raise the body to the 
half reach ; raise the right hand to the reach 
(Fig. 10), the left following on the left, draw 
up the body to the half reach. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down to 
the rest, the left following on the left, lower 
the body to the reach of the hands. Re- 
peat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left 
hand leading. 

RIGHT AND LEFT. 



Fourth Series. 
Exercise 1 3. 
Course III. 



Position as in first ex- 
cise. 
1. As in twelfth exercise. 



2. Bend the arm3 and raise the body as in preceding exercise ; raise the 
right hand to the reach and at the. same time elevate the body to the rest of 
the ieft, raise the left hand to the reach beyond the right, at the same time 
elevate the body to the rest of the right. Repeat, the leading hand passing 
the supporting hand at each step. 

In descending, slip the right hand down to the rest, lower the body to the 
reach of the left ; slip the left hand down below the right, and lower the body 
to the reach of the right. Repeat. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

Fourth Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 14. 1. As in twelfth exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Bend the arms and raise the body to the half reach 

of the hands, and on the instant shoot up both hands to the reach, draw up 

the body to the half reach. Repeat. 

In descending, slip both hands down to the rest, lower the body to the 
reach. Repeat. 



APPENDIX C. 



141 



THE INCLINED LADDER. 

It may seem unnecessary to teach by formal instructions exercises so 
simple as many of those directed in the text to be performed on this machine, 
but their usefulness may be readily proved. Let a dozen men be taken at 
hazard and desired to climb a ladder at any given incline, and it will be found 
that scarcely two will do so in the same manner, scarcely two will maintain 
throughout the ascent the position and action with which they began, while 
uncertainty, hesitation, and insecurity will more or less mark the efforts of 
all. The practised gymnast, on the contrary, will mount it as surely and as 
rapidly as if it were a staircase, in any one of a dozen different ways, on its 
being merely indicated by the name which it bears in his book of instruc- 
tions. 

This machine is an ordinary ladder, but it should be carefully constructed, 
and the materials well selected. The width of the ladder between the sup^ 
ports should be 14 or 15 inches, and the spars 9 inches apart. 

The inclination of the ladder should be frequently varied. 

First Series .Above the Ladder. 

Second Series Under the Ladder. 

Third Series The hands only. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING. 



First Series. Position of attention, at the foot of the ladder, the toea 

Exercise 1. touching it. 

Course I. 1. Raise the right hand and grasp the spar nearest the 

reach, the left following, the fingers and thumbs Fig. 1. 

together ; lift the right foot from the ground, and place 
it on the first spar, the left following, resting on the 
front of the foot, the toes pointed to the front, the col- 
umn of the body and lower limbs straight but uncon- 
strained, and inclined in the line of the ladder, the 
head erect, the eyes directed to the reach of the hands 
(Fig. 1). 

2. Raise the right hand to the next spar, the left fol- 
lowing, lift the right foot to the next spar straighten 
the right knee, and lift the left foot to the next spar. 
Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right foot down to the next 
spar, the left following, slip the right hand down to 
the next spar, the left following. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand 
leading. 

This exercise to be repeated with the hands lightly grasping the sides of 
the ladder, 




142 



APPENDIX C. 



Fi: 




RIGHT SIDE LEADING. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 2. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course I. 2. Raise the right hand to the next 

spar and at the same time lift the right foot to the next 
spar (Fig. 2), straighten the right knee and lift the left 
hand and left foot together to the same spar. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down to the next spar 
and at the same time slip the right foot down to the next 
spar, the left hand and left foot following. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left side lead- 
ing. 

This exercise to be repeated with the hands lightly 
grasping the sides of the ladder. 

RIGHT AND LEFT SIDE. 



JTirst Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 3. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course I. 2. Raise the right hand to the next spar, and at the 

same time lift the right foot to the nextspar, as in Fig. 2 ; straighten the 
right knee and at the same time raise the left hand to the spar above that 
grasped by the right, and lift the left foot to the spar above that occupied 
by the right. Repeat the step, the leading hand and foot always passing 
the spars occupied by the supporting hand and foot. 

In descending, pass the leading hand down to the spar below that grasped 
by the supporting hand, and the leading foot to the spar below that occupied 
hy the supporting foot. Repeat. 

Fig. 3. This exercise to be repeated with the hands lightly 

grasping the sides of the ladder. 

RIGHT AND LEFT, HAND AND FOOT. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 4. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course I. 2. Raise the right hand to the next 

spar and at the same time lift the left foot to the next 
spar (Fig. 3) ; straighten the left knee and at the same 
time raise the left hand to the spar above that grasped 
by the right, and lift the right foot to the spar above 
that occupied by the left. Repeat the step, the leading 
hand and foot always passing the spars occupied by 
the supporting hand and foot. 

In descending, pass the leading hand to the spar 
below that grasped by the supporting hand, and the 
leading foot to the spar below that occupied by the 
supporting foot, Repeat. 




APPENDIX C. 



143 



This exercise to be repeated with the hands lightly grasping the sides of 
the ladder. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 5. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course II. 2. Raise both hands to the next spar ; lift the right foot 

to the next spar, the left following. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right foot down to the next spar, the left following ; 
slip both hands down to the next spar. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the hands lightly grasping the sides of the 
ladder. 



WITH ONE HAND. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 6. 1. Place the left hand upon the 

Course II. hip joint, the fingers to the front 

the thumb to the rear ; raise the right hand and grasp 
the spar nearest the reach, lift the left foot and place 
it on the first spar, the right following (Fig. 4). 

2. Raise the right hand to the next spar, lift the left 
foot to the next spar, straighten the left knee, elongate 
the trunk, and lift the right foot to the same spar. Re- 
peat. 

In descending, slip the left foot down to the next 
spar, the right following, slip the right hand down 
to the next spar. Repeat. 

This exercise 1 to be repeated with the left hand. 

This exercise to be repeated with the hand lightly 
grasping the side of the ladder. 

WITH THE FEET ONLY. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 7. 1. Place both hands on the hip 

Course II. joints, lift the right foot from the 

ground and place it on the first spar, the left follow- 
ing, the feet advanced on the spar so that the rest is 
nearly at the heel, and the front of the leg nearly 
touching the spars ; the column of the body inclined 
to the front, the head in the same line and the eyes 
directed to the front. 

2. Lift the left foot to the second spar (Fig. 5), 
straighten the left leg and at the same time lift the 
right foot to the same spar. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the left foot down to the next 
spar, the right following. Repeat. 



Pig. 4. 




Fig. 5. 




144 



APPENDIX C. 




RIGHT HAND LEADING. 

(by the spabs.) 

Fig. 6. Second Series. Position of attention, under 

Exercise 8. the ladder. 

Course III. 1. Raise the right hand 

and grasp the spar nearest the reach, the left 
following, the fingers and thumb together ; lift 
the right foot from the ground and place it on 
the nearest spar, the left following, straighten 
the knees, elongate the trunk, the arms ben£ at 
the half reach, the chest advanced, the body in- 
clined in the line of, and close to the ladder, the 
head back, the eyes directed to the reach of the 
hands (Fig. 6). 

2. Raise the right hand to the next spar, the 

left following; lift the right foot to the next 

spar, the left following, straighten the knees and 

elongate the trunk. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right foot down to the 

next spar, the left following ; slip the right hand down to the next spar, the 

left following. Repeat. 
This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading. 

RIGHT SIDE LEADING. 

(by the spabs.) 
Pig. 7, Second Sebies. Position as in eighth ex- 

Exercise 9. ercise. 

Course II. 1. As in eighth exercise. 

2. Raise the right hand to the next spar, and 
at the sametime lift the right foot to the next spar 
(Fig. 7), the left hand and foot following on the 
left. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down to the 
the next sp«r, and at the same time slip the righ^ 
foot down to the next spar, the left hand and foot 
following together to the same spars. Repeat, 

This exercise is to be repeated with the left side- 
leading. 

RIGHT AND LEFT SIDE. 

(by the spabs) 
Second Sebies. Position as in eighth exercise. 

Exercise 10. 1. As in eighth exercise. 

Course II. 2. Raise the right hand to the next spar, and at the- 




APPENDIX C. 



145 



same time lift the right foot to the next spar, as in Fig. 7 ; straighten the right 
knee and at the same time raise the left hand to the spar above that grasped by 
the right, and lift the left foot to the spar above that occupied by the right. 
Repeat the step, the leading hand and foot always passing the supporting hand 
and foot. 

In descending, pass the leading hand down to the spar below that grasped 
by the supporting hand, and the leading foot to the spar below that occupied 
by the supporting foot. Repeat. Pig. 8. 

RIGHT AND LEFT, HAND AND FOOT. 

(by the spars.) 

Second Series. Position as in eighth ex- 

Exercise 11. ercise. 

Course II. 1. As in eighth exercise. 

2. Raise the right hand to the next 3par and 
at the same time lift the left foot to the next spar 
(Fig. 8), straightening the left knee and elongate 
the trunk, and at the same time raise the left hand 
to the spar above that grasped by the right, and 
the right foot to the spar above that occupied by 
the left. Repeat the step, the leading hand and 
foot always passing the spars occupied by the 
supporting hand and foot. 

In descending, slip the leading hand down to 
the spar below that grasped by the supporting hand and the leading foot to 
the spar below that occupied by the supporting foot. Repeat. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. Fig, 9 

(by the spars.) 

Second Series. As in eighth exercise. 

Exercise 12. 1. As in eighth exercise. 

Course ni. 2. Raise both hands to the 

next spar and lift both feet to the next spar 
straighten the knees and elongate the trunk. 
Repeat. 

In desending, pass both feet down to the next 
spar, and pass both hands down to the next spar, 
Repeat. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING. 

(by the sides.) 

Second Series. Position as in eighth ex- 

Exercise 13. cises. 

Course II. 1. As in eighth exercise, 

except that the hands grasp the sides of the ladder, right and left, instead 
of the spars (Fig. 9). 

10a rr 





146 



APPENDIX C. 



2. Raise the right hand to the reach, the left following on the left; lift 
the right foot to the next spar, the left following, straighten the knees and 
elongate the trunk. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right foot down to the next spar, the left following; 
slip the right hand down to the rest, the left following on the left. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading. 

RIGHT SIDE LEADING. 

(by the sides.) 

Second Series. Position as in eighth exercise. 

Exercise 14 1. As in thirteenth exercise. 

Course II. 2. Raise the right hand to the reach, and at the same 

time lift the right foot to the next spar, the left hand and foot following on 

the left. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down to the rest, and at the same time 
slip the right foot down to the next spar, the left hand and left foot following 
on the left. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left side leading. 

RIGHT AND LEFT SIDE. 

(by the sides.) 

Second Series. Position as in eighth exercise. 

Exercise 15. 1. As in thirteenth exercise. 

Course II. 2. Raise the right hand to the reach, and at the same 

time lift the right foot to the next spar, straighten the right knee, and at the 

same time raise the left hand to the reach and lift the left foot to the spar 

above that occupied by the right. Repeat the step, the leading hand and foot 

always passing the supporting hand and foot. 

In descending, pass the leading hand down to the rest, and at the same time 
slip the leading foot down to the spar below that occupied by the supporting 
foot. Repeat. 

RIGHT AND LEFT, HAND AND FOOT. 

(by the sides.) 

Second Series. Position as in eighth exercise. 

Exercise 16- 1. As in thirteenth exercise. 

Course II. 2. Raise the right hand to the reach, and at the same 

time lift the left foot to the next spar ; straighten the left knee and elongate 
the trunk, and at the same time raise the left hand to the reach and the right 
hand to the spar above that occupied hy the left. Repeat the step, the lead- 
ing hand and foot always passing the supporting hand and foot. 

In descending, pass the leading hand down to the rest, and at the same 
time slip the leading foot down the spar below that occupied by the support- 
ing foot. Repeat. 



APPENDIX C. 



147 



Fig. 10. 



BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

(BY THE SIDES.) 

Second Sebies. Position as in eighth exercise. 

Exercise 17. 1. As in thirteenth exercise. 

Course III 2. Raise both hands to the reach, lift both feet to the 

next spar, straighten the knees and elongate the trunk. Repeat. 

In descending, slip both hands down the distance of the step, pass both 
feet down to the next spar. Repeat. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING. 

(by spars and sides.) 

Second Sebies. Position as in eighth 

Exercise 18. exercise. 

Course II. 1. As in eighth exer- 

cise, except that the leading hand grasps the 
spar, the supporting hand grasps the side of 
the ladder (Fig. 10). 

2. Raise the right hand to the next spar, 
raise the left hand the same distance on the 
side ; lift the right foot to the next spar, the 
left following, straighten the knees and elon- 
gate the trunk. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right foot down to 
the next spar, the left following, slip the 
right hand down to the next spar, the left fol- 
lowing on the side, the same distance. Re- 
peat. 

Tbis~exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading. 

RIGHT SIDE LEADING. 




(by spabs and sides.) 

Position as in eighth exercise. 
As in eighteenth exercise. 



1. 



Second Series. 
Exercise 19- 

Coubse H. 2. Raise the right hand to the next spar, and at the 

same time lift the right foot to the next spar, the left hand and left foot fol- 
lowing the same distance. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down to the next spar, and at the same 
time slip the right foot down to the next spar, the left hand and left foot fol- 
lowing the same distance. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left side leading. 

RIGHT AND LEFT SIDE. 
(by spabs and sides.) 

Position as in eighth exercise. 

1. As in eighteenth exercise. 

2. Raise the right hand to the next spar, and at the 



Second Sebies. 
Exercise 20. 
Course H. 



148 



APPENDIX C. 



Second Series. 
Exercise 22. 
Course III. 



same time lift the right foot to the next spar ; straighten the right knee and at 
the same time raise the left hand the distance of the step above the right 
and the left foot to the spar above that occupied by the right. Repeat the 
step, the leading hand and foot always passing the supporting hand and foot. 
In descending, slip the leading hand and foot down the distance of the step 
below the supporting hand and foot. Repeat. 

RIGHT AND LEFT, HAND AND FOOT. - 
(by spars and sides.) 
Second Series. Position as in eighth exercise. 

Exercise 21. 1. As in eighteenth exercise. 

Course II. 2. Raise the right hand to the next spar, and at the 

same time lift the left foot to the next spar; raise the left hand the distance of 
the step above the right, and the right foot to the spar above that occupied 
by the left. Repeat the step, the leading hand and foot always passing the 
supporting hand and foot. 

In descending, slip the leading hand and foot down the distance of the step 
below the supporting hand and foot. Repeat. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 
(by spars and sides.) 
Position as in eighth exercise. 

1. As in eighteenth exercise. 

2. Raise both hands the distance of the step, the 
right grasping the next spar, the left grasping the side ; lift both feet to the 
next spar, straighten the knees and elongate the trunk. Repeat. 

In descending, slip both hands down the distance of the step, pass both 
feet down to the next spar. Repeat. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING. 

(by the sides.) 
Third Series. Position as in seventh exercise. 

Exercise 23. [1. Raise the right hand to the 

Course III. reach and grasp the side of the 

ladder, the left following on the left, the fingers and 
thumbs meeting; bend the arms to the half reach, 
lifting the feet from the ground, the legs straight 
and together, the toes pointed downwards, the trunk 
of the body upright, the neck free, the head held 
back, the eyes directed to the reach of the hands 
(Fig. 11). 

2. Raise the right hand to the reach, the left fol- 
lowing on the left; bend the arms to the half reach, 
retaining the trunk and lower limbs in position. 
Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down to the 
rest, the left following on the left. Repeat. 
This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading. 



Fig. 11. 




APPENDIX C 



149 



Third Series. 
Exercise 25. 
Course IV. 



Fig. 12. 



HAND OVER HAND. 

(by the sides.) 
Third Series. Position as in eighth exercise. 

Exercise 24. 1» As in twenty-second exercise. 

Course III. 2. Raise the right hand to the reach, bend the right 

arm and on the instant raise the left hand to the reach, beyond the right. 
Repeat, the leading hand always passing the spar grasped by the supporting 
hand. 
In descending, slip the leading hand down to the rest, below the supporting 

hand. Repeat. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

(by the sides.) 

Position as in eighth exercise. 

1. As in twenty-second exercise. 

2. Shoot up both hands to the reach, retaining the arms 
bent, and the trunk and lower limbs in position. Repeat. 

In descending, slip both hands down to the reach. Repeat. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING. 

(by the spars.) 
Third Series. Position as in eighth 

Exercise 26. exercise. 

Course III. 1. Raise the right hand 

and grasp the spar nearest the reach, the 
left following, the fingers and thumbs to- 
gether; beDd the arms to the half reach, 
lifting the feet from the ground, the trunk and 
lower limbs as in twenty-first exercise (Fig. 12.) 

2. Raise the right hand to the next spar, 
the left following, bend the arms to the half 
reach, retaining the trunk and lower limbs in 
position. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down to 
the next spar, the left following. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left 
hand leading. 

HAND OVER HAND. 

(by the spars.) 
Position as in eighth exercise. 

1. As in twenty-fifth exercise. 

2. Raise the right hand to the next spar, bend the right 
arm and on the instant raise the left hand to the spar above that grasped by 
the right. Repeat, the leading hand always passing the spar grasped by the 
supporting hand. 

In descending, slip the leading down to the spar below that grasped by the 
supporting hand. Repeat. 




Third Serees. 
Exercise 27. 
Course III. 



150 



APPENDIX C. 



Third Series. 
Exercise 28. 
Course IV. 



BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

(by the spars.) 

Position as in eighth exercise. 

1. As in twenty-fifth exercise. 

2. Shoot up both hands to the next spar, retaining the 
arms bent, and the trunk and lower limbs in position. Repeat. 

In descending, slip both hands down to the next spar. Repeat. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING. 

(by spars and sides.) 

Third Series. Position as in eighth exercise. 

Exercise 29. 1. As in twenty- third exercise, except that the right 

Course III. hand grasps the spar, the left hand grasps the side of the 

ladder, opposite the right. 

2. Raise the right hand to the next spar, the left following the same dis- 
tance on the side. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down to the next spar, the left following 
the same distance on the side. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading and grasping the 
spar, the right hand on the side. 

HAND OVER HAND. 

(by spars and sides.) 

Third Series. Position as in eight exercise. 

Exercise 30. 1. As in twenty-ninth exercise. 

Course III. 2. Raise the right hand to the next spar, bend the right 

arm and on the instant raise the left hand to the reach beyond the right. 

Repeat, the leading hand always passing the supporting hand. 

In descending, slip the right hand down to the next spar below the left, slip 
the left down below the right. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated, the left hand grasping the spar, the right hand 
on the side. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

(by spars and sides.) 

Third Series. Position as in eighth exercise. 

Exercise 31. 1. As in twenty-ninth exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Shoot up both hands the distance of the step (the 

distance between the spars), the right grasping the next spar, the left grasp- 
ing the side of the ladder, opposite the right. Repeat. 

In descending, slip both hands down the distance of the step, as in the 
ascent. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated, the left hand grasping the spar, the right hand 
on the side. 



APPENDIX C. 



151 



Fig. 13. 




LEFT HAND LEADING. 

(sideways.) 

Third Series. Position of attention, the ladder 

Exercise 32. in profile on the left. 

Course III. 1. Raise the right hand and pass- 

ing it above the ladder, grasp the spar nearest the 
reach, the fingers and thumb meeting, raise the left 
hand and passing it under the ladder, grasp the spar 
above that grasped by the right ; bend the arms and 
lift both feet from the ground, the legs straight and 
together, the toes pointed downwards, the trunk of the 
body upright, the neck free, the head slightly held back 
the eyes directed to the reach of the hands (Fig. 13). 

2. Raise the left hand to the next spar, raise the right 
hand to the next spar. Repeat. 

In descending, pass the right hand down to the next 
spar, pass the left hand down to the next spar. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the right hand 
leading. 

HAND OVER HAND. 

(sideways.) 

Third Series. Position as in thirty-second exercise. 

3 2 ( : c : : .t ( 3.3 1. As in thirty-second exercise . 

Course IV. 2. Raise the right hand to the spar above that grasped 

by the left, elevate the body and raise the left hand to the spar above that 
grasped by the right. Repeat. 

In descending, pass the leading hand down to the spar below that grasped 
by the supporting hand. Repeat. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING. 

(sideways, legs up.) 

Third Series. Position as in thirty- 

Exercise 34. second exercise. 

Course III. 1. As in thirty-second 

exercise, except that in lifting the feet from 
the ground they are to be extended to the 
front horizontally the legs straight and to- 
gether, the toes pointed to the front (Fig. 14) 

2. As in thirty-second exercise, retaining 
the lower limbs in position. Repeat. 

Descend as in thirty -second exercise. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left 
hand leading. 



Fig. 14. 




152 



APPENDIX C. 



Third Series. 
Exercise 35. 
Course IV. 
in position. Repeat. 
Descend as in thirty-third exercise 



HAND OVER HAND. 
(sideways, legs up.) 

Position as in thirty-second exercise. 

1. As in thirty-fourth exercise. 

2. As in twenty-fifth exercise, retaining the lower limbs 




RIGHT HAND LEADING. 

(above the ladder.) 

Third Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 36. 1. Raise both hands and 

Course IV. grasp the spar nearest the 

reach, the fingers and thumb meeting; press 
strongly from the hands and straightening the 
arms, lift both feet from the ground and pass 
them right and left outside the ladder, the inside 
of the foot lightly pressing against the supports, 
the legs straight, the toes pointed downwards, 
the chest advanced, the head slightly bent back 
(Fig. 15). 

2. Raise the right hand to the next spar, 
straighten the right arm, and raise the left hand 
to the same spar. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down to the 
next spar, the left following. Repeat. 
This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading. 

HAND OVER HAND. 

(above the ladder.) 

Third Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 37. 1. As in thirty- sixth exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Raise the right hand to the next spar, straighten the 

right arm and on the instant raise the left hand to the spar above that grasped 

by the right. Repeat the step, the leading hand always passing the spar 

grasped by the supporting hand. 

In descending, slip the leading hand down to the spar below that grasped by 
the supporting hand. Repeat. 

The first five exercises of the second series and the first three exercises of 
th# third series may be executed with the hands reversed. 

TO DESCEND RAPIDLY. 

(above the ladder.) 

Pass the right leg over the side of the ladder, the knee bent, the foreleg pen- 
dent, the left leg following on the left. Pass the right hand to the outside of 



APPENDIX C. 153 

the ladder grasping the support on the underside, the fingers and thumb to- 
gether, the left hand following on the left. Regulate the rate of descent by 
the pressure of the hands. 



CLIMBING. 



An upright object presents itself as the most perfect form of machine to be 
ascended by climbing, and the hands are the chief agent in affecting the 
ascent, for they not only aid in the execution of every exercise, simple or dim- 
cult, in which the feet take a share, but there is a large series embracing the 
most difficult and artistic exercises, in which the body is sustained and elevated 
by the hands alone. 

Following out this idea, a perfectly vertical object, of girth capable of being 
grasped by the hand, maybe viewed as the typical machine for climbing. 
But this simple description of machine instantly takes a dual form from the 
nature of the material of which it is constructed ; it is either hard and firm, 
like the wooden pole affording unyielding fulcra to the muscles of the hands 
in their grasp, and to those of the feet in their clasp, or it is soft and pliable 
like the hempen rope, the characteristics of which are the reverse of these. 

We have thus at the very outset two machines, giving origin to the two 
•divisions of machines employed in this section, the one being the single upright 
pole, fixed or suspended, and the other, its companion machine, the single 
rope similarly placed ; and all deviations from these two, either in dimensions, 
number, or position, are but modifications of them, designed for special pur- 
poses. 

Where the single pole is retained, and its dimensions only are altered, every 
gradation of size may be obtained until the girth of the mast is reached, the 
exercises being modified or changed with the alteration in the dimensions of 
the machine. Where the single pole is retained, and its position changed for 
the inclined one, the exercises again change, taking a range both wide and 
varied ; and when the pole, from being fixed, is made to turn on its axis, again 
the exercises, in action and position, in nature and purpose, change also. 

The first division, springing from the slender, upright pole, branches first 
into the pair of poles, arranged in such a position as to present one to each 
hand about the width of the shoulders apart, the body to be sustained between 
the two, and from this arrangement springs an arduous series of exercises ; 
next, into those poles which, being inclined, present a long series of simple 
exercises, the altered position of the poles altering the entire character of the 
exercises to be executed upon them. 

The second branch, springing from the single vertical rope, also takes a 
very extended form. A double rope is not accepted, as yielding no exercise 
sufficiently removed from those on the pair of poles to justify its adoption as 
a separate machine. A wider range of exercises, in which the lower limbs 
also are employed, is afforded by the rope than by the pole, and those in 
which the hands alone sustain and elevate the body are all a degree harder 
than the corresponding ones on its companion machine. The single rope 



154 APPENIDX C. 

may be simple or knotted, the knots being formed in the rope itself, or super- 
added ; and every change will to some extent enlarge the range of the exer- 
cises, qualify their difficulty, and vary the parts of the body required for their 
execution. 

The position varies but little throughout the section with regard to the 
trunk of the body, because it is determined by principles which are equally 
important in every exercise, viz., to set the limbs free from the due execution 
of the movements of the step, to preserve the equilibrium, and to give full 
scope to respiration ; but with regard to the limbs, it is varied in every exer- 
cise on each machine. 

In the initiatory practice, the instructor should count the time for the 
learner, — one, two, three, — for the three separate movements of the step, at a 
pace proportionate to his ability, taking care that each step is of the same 
length, and executed at the same speed as the others ; perfect cadence and 
rhythm should accompany the whole of each exercise, both in the ascent and 
descent. 

The initiatory practice should consist of brief efforts, and the instructor 
should give the 'halt' on the slightest indication of exhaustion or insecurity 
of grasp ; a pause, less or more protracted, should always follow the halt, and 
as much care should be given to the descent as to the ascent ; the last step 
should be as carefully completed as any in the exercise, the feet should be set 
leisurely upon the ground, and the grasp of the hands quietly relinquished, 
the movement being closed in the original position of 'attention/ and place 
immediately given to another climber. 

The instructor should also carefully impress upon the learner the desira- 
bility of executing every exercise quietly and steadily, of keeping the coun- 
tenance quiet even under the most severe efforts, and of never, on any occa- 
sion, speakinar while executing an exercise himself, or of addressing any one 
else who is doing so. 

On the other hand, so long as proper care and attention are given to the 
exercises, and full regard is paid to the directions of the instructor, an out- 
ward expression of pleasure and interest among the learners is to be encour- 
aged rather than checked ; and the slips and mishaps of beginners, in certain 
exercises where no attendant danger is to be dreaded, are legitimate sources 
of amusement ; its proper bounds being always a matter of calculation with 
the instructors. 



THE VERTICAL POLE. 

It is characteristic of simple climbing, i. e. that form of climbing in which 
all the resources of the body capable of aiding in the ascent are called into 
action, that the upper and lower limbs and trunk all receive a fair share of 
well-distributed employment. The first series gives the same employment in 
every exercise to the lower half of the body, with a different mode of employ- 
ment to the upper, in each separate one. In the first exercise (which is con- 
sidered the easiest mode of ascent, because neither hand is ever separated for 



APPENDIX C. 155 

a moment from the pole, while both are acting during the elevation of the 
body which completes each step), one side of the body leads throughout the 
ascent, and the other throughout the descent. In an elementary sense this 
feature can be turned to great advantage if one side of the body be weaker 
than the other, by giving that side the lead, and consequently the largest 
share of employment ; in a practical sense by making the strongest and most 
dexterous member the leading one, and consequently the chief agent in the 
ascent. In the next form, where the action is alternated right and left, the 
equalization of the body is preserved on the same principle as in certain exer- 
cises in the preceding section, from the fact that both sides are separately, 
and each for itself and by itself, doing the same amount of work, and there- 
fore the weaker side, being the weaker, is virtually doing more, — is being 
urged to greater activity, reaping a proportionately greater advantage. Here 
each hand, during its elevation, entirely quits the pole, and the body is raised 
on the elevation of each. In the fourth exercise both hands act together, 
both in the ascent and descent, thus both quitting the pole at the same instant. 

In all these exercises the column of the body is maintained in the position 
most favorable to free respiration. 

The instructor should take care that the learner places his hands and feet in 
their proper order and position in commencing each exercise ; the leading arm 
should be completely extended to the reach at each step, and the arms must 
not be bent when the feet are lifted, but only when the elongation of the legs 
and trunk renders it necessary in the third movement of the step. Beginners 
frequently try to struggle up the machine by means of the hands only, the 
instructor should therefore carefully explain to them how one part of the body 
assists the other in making the ascent, and how, upon the correct employ- 
ment of these various parts, the facility and elegance of climbing depend. 
When the feet are lifted in the .second movement, the upper part of the body 
must not be allowed to incline backwards, but the back must be bent out- 
wards. 

In the third movement, the legs and trunk must be straightened without 
jerk, and the whole body be kept as close to the pole as possible. Ih the 
descent, the legs and trunk should be kept straight throughout, the body being 
sustained by the legs during the movements of the hands. 

In the second exercise, the upper part of the body must not be allowed to 
sway too much from side to side, which is apt to result from the separate em- 
ployment of the hands ; and in the descent the moving hand should not be 
placed until the opposite arm is perfectly extended. 

The second series of exercises on this machine is of a much more arduous 
character than the first. In the former the upper limbs take up and repeat 
the action of the latter, but they are entirely unaided by the lower limbs and 
trunk, and in some exercises the position of these is chosen for its value in an 
elementary sense, its object being to heighten the difficulty of the exercise, 
and to intensify the action of the upper part of the body, by acting strongly 
against it. 

In the first exercise of this series, the lower half of the body is merely held 
quiescent, and in the position most favorable to the ascent ; in the second, it 



156 APPENDIX C. 

is held formally in the line of the machine ; and in the third, the same formal- 
ity of position is preserved with the lower half, while the upper is employed 
in rapid action, elevating the whole. 

The elementary value of this second series is very great, developing power- 
fully not only the muscular energies of the arms and upper portion of the 
trunk, but the tenacity and security of the grip of the hands, and the facility 
and readiness of action of the upper limbs, either in separate or combined 
effort. The single exercise of the third series may be viewed as the culmi- 
nating one on this machine. 

In performing the exercises the learner must be instructed not to allow the 
left side to sway round to the left side of the pole ; but the hands must ascend 
and descend in a straight line, and the same side of the pole be retained 
throughout. In the second exercise, beginners are very apt to make a more 
complete step with the left hand than with the right, because they are better 
able to support themselves with the right while the left moves, and for the 
same reason to allow the left arm to relax while the right moves, so that 
special attention is required to insure an equal step with each hand. In the 
fourth exercise the body must not be allowed to recede as the hands are moved, 
and the movement of these must therefore take place before the flexion of the 
arms is quite complete. 

In the last exercise a strong pressure of the feet will be required to prevent 
the body from receding as the hand is raised to the reach, and the upper part 
of the body must be kept as close as possible to the pole throughout. 

During the first few steps, the position of the instructor should be where he 
can best observe the movements of the climber; afterwards, his position 
should be behind the climber on the left, that he may be able to interpose his 
right hand in the event of a slip. 

The Vertical Pole may be of any height from 15 feet to 30 feet, and there 
should be in a gymnasium three or four of different diameter, viz. 2 inches, 2£ 
inches, and 3 inches. 

First Series With hands and feet. 

Second Series .With hands only. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING. 

First Series. Position of attention, facing the pole. 

Exercise 1 . 1. Raise the right hand to the reach and grasp the pole, 

Course I. the left following (Pig. 1) ; lift the right foot from the 

ground and place it against the left side of the pole, the knee on the right side 
(Fig. 2) ; lift the left foot and place it in front of the pole, the ankles crossing, 
the outside edges of the feet together, the pole between them (Fig. 3) ; 
straighten the legs and elongate the trunk ; the whole column of the body 
upright, the chest advanced, the shoulders flat, the elbows in by the sides, the 
hands at the half reach, the neck free, the head slightly held back, the chin 
elevated, the eyes directed to the reach of the hands (Fig. 4). 

2. Raise the right hand to the reach and grasp the pole, the left following ; 
draw up the lower limbs without relinquishing their clasp of the pole, allow- 
ing it, as it were, merely to slip between, and without bending the arms, as in 



Tie. 1. 



APPENDIX C. 

Fig. 2. Fig. 3. 



15? 




Fig. 4. 



Fig. 3 ; tighten the clasp of the feet when elevated, straighten the knees and 
elongate the trunk to the rest of the hands, as in Fig. 4. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the left hand down to the rest and grasp the pole, the 
right following ; slacken the clasp of the lower limbs, lower the body to the 
reach of the hands, retaining the legs straight and the pole between them. 
Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading, the relative positions 
of the feet reversed. Fig. 5. 

HAND OYER HAND. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 2. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course I. 2. Raise the right hand to the reach and 

grasp the pole (Fig. 5), draw up the lower limbs without bending 

the right arm, straighten the legs, and elongate the trunk to the 

rest of the right arm. Repeat, raising the left hand to the reach ; 

the right and left hand alternating throughout. 

In descending, slip the leading hand down to the rest and 
grasp the pole, lower the body to the reach of the supporting 
hand, the rest of the body as in first exercise. Repeat. 

HAND OVER HAND. 
(a second method.) 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 3- 1. As in first exercise. 

Course I. 2. Raise the left hand to the half reach above 

the right, and raise the right to the reach above the left, draw up the lower 
limbs, straighten the legs, and elongate the trunk. Repeat. 
Descend as in second exercise. 



153 



APPENDIX C. 



BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 4. 1. Eaise both hands to the reach and grasp the pole ; lift 

Course II. both feet from the ground and clasp the pole in the position 

of first exercise, bringing the hands to the half reach, as in Fig. 4, the rest of 
the body as in first exercise. 

2. Shoot up both hands to the reach, draw up the lower limbs without bend- 
ing the arms, straighten the knees and elongate the trunk. Repeat. 

In descending, slip both hands down to the rest and grasp the pole, lower 
the body to the reach of the hands, the rest of the body as in first exercise. 
Repeat. 

Fig - 6 - WITH ONE HAND. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 5. 1. Raise the right hand to the reach 

Course IV. a) id grasp the pole ; spring from the 

ground and clasp the pole with the feet as in first exercise, 
bringing the right hand to the half reach ; place the left 
hand on the hip joint, the fingers to the front, the thumb 
to the rear, the rest of the body in the position of first exer- 
cise. 

2. Tighten the clasp of the feet, raise the right hand to 
the reach (Fig. 6), draw up the lower limbs without bending 
the arm, straighten the knees and elongate the trunk. Re- 
peat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down to the rest, 
lower the body to the half reach of the hand. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING. 

Second Series Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 6. 1. Raise the right hand to the reach and grasp the pole, 

Course III. the left following; lift both feet from the ground and pass 

them to the right side of the pole, the hands at the half reach, the left thigh 
slightly pressing against it; the legs together and straight and slanting to the 
front, the toes pointed in the same direction, the trunk of the body held firm 
and upright, the chest advanced, the shoulders flat, the elbows in by the sides, 
the head slightly held back, the eyes directed to the reach of the hands (Fig. 7). 

2. Raise the right hand to the reach and grasp the pole, the left following; 
elevate the body to the half reach of the hands. Repeat. At the last step, 
clasp the pole with the feet as in first exercise. 

In descending, grasp the pole firmly with the left hand, and pass the right 
outside the pole over to the left breast, against which press with the open palm 
(Fig. 8); pass the left outside of these, and with the open palm press the outside 
of the right fore-arm. By the clasp of tfre feet and the pressure of the arms 
guide the rate of descent. 




APPENDIX C. 



159 



This exercise to be repeated with the lower limbs on the left side of the pole. 
These exercises to be repeated with the left hand leading. 
Fig. 7. Fig. 8. Fig. 9. Fig. 10. 




HAND OYER HAND. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 7 . 1. Raise the right hand to the reach and grasp the pole, 

Course III. the left following; lift both feet from the ground, raising 

the body until the hands are at the half reach ; the legs straight and together, 
the toes pointed downwards ; and slightly turned out (the pole lying free be- 
tween them), the column of the body perfectly upright and in the line of the 
pole, the head erect, the eyes directed to the reach of the hands (Fig. 9). 

2. Raise the right hand to the reach, elevating the body to the rest of the 
left ; raise the left hand to the reach, elevating the body to the rest of the right. 
Repeat. At the last step clasp the pole with the feet, as in first exercise. 

In descending, remove the hands from the pole and extend the arms hori- 
zontally to the side, right and left, the fingers together, the palms to the front 
(Fig. 10). Guide the descent by the pressure of the lower limbs. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 



Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 8. 1. Raise both hands to the reach and grasp the pole, 

Course III. the rest of the body as in sixth exercise. 

2. Shoot up both hands to the reach and grasp the pole, elevate the body to 
the half reach of the hands. Repeat. 

In descending, slip both hands down to the rest and grasp the pole, lower 
the body to the half reach of the hands. Repeat. 



160 



APPENDIX C 



THE VERTICAL POLE. 
(fixed close to a wall.) 

The difficulty of the exercises on this machine in this position is almost 
solely owing to its position against a wall, whereby the freedom of the hand- 
grasp and the clasp of the lower limbs are entirely lost. All its exercises are 
of the most arduous description, and can only be accomplished after the hand 
and fore-arm have been strengthened by similar but less difficult exercise. 

This machine is a pole, 3 inches in diameter, fixed within 1£ inch of the 
face of a wall by means of small wooden blocks at intervals behind it. 

First Series Hands and Feet. 

Second Series Hands and Knees. 



Fig. 1. 




RIGHT HAND LEADING. 

First Series. Position of attention, facing the 
Exercise 1. wall, the toes touching it. 

Course TV. 1. Raise the right hand to the 

reach and grasp the pole, the fingers and thumb meet- 
ing, the left following close under it; lift the right foot 
from the ground and place it flat upon the wall as 
high as the hip, on the right side of, and close to, 
the pole, the left following on the left (Fig. 1). 

2. Slightly incline the body to the left front, raise 
the right hand to the reach, incline the body to the 
right front, raise the left hand to the reach, grasp 
strongly with both hands, lift the right foot the dis- 
tance of the step, the left following on the left. Re- 
peat. 

In deseeding, slip the left foot down the distance 
of the step, the right following ; slip the left hand 
down to the rest, the right following. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand lead- 
ing. 

RIGHT SIDE LEADING. 



First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 2. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Slightly inclinefthe body to the left front, raise the 

right hand to the reach and at the same time lift the right foot the distance of the 

step ; the left hand and left foot following together the same distance. Repeat. 

In descending, slightly incline the body to the left front, slip the right hand 
down to the rest and at the same time slip the right foot down the same dis- 
tance. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left side leading. 



APPENDIX C. 



161 



RIGHT AND LEFT SIDE. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 3 1. As in first exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Slightly incline the body to the left front, raise the 

right hand to the reach and at the same time lift the right foot the distance 

of the step (Fig. 2); incline the body to the right front, raise the left hand to 

the reach above the right and at the same time lift the left foot the distance of 

the step beyond the right. Repeat. 

In descending, incline the body to the supporting side, pass the leading 
hand down to the rest and at the same time slip the leading foot down the dis- 
tance of the step. Repeat. 

RIGHT AND LEFT, HAND AND FOOT. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 4. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Raise the right hand to the reach and at the same 

time lift the left foot the distance of the step (Fig. 3); raise the left hand to the 
reach and at the same time lift the right foot the distance of the step. Repeat. 
In descending, pass the leading hand down to the rest, and at the same time 
slip the leading foot down the distance of the step. Repeat. 

Fig. 2. Fig. 3. Fig. 4. 






RIGHT HAND LEADING. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 5. 1. Raise the right hand to the reach and grasp the pole, 

Course IV. the left following close under it; spring from the ground 

and bring both knees against the wall, as high as the waist, one on each side of 
the pole, touching it (Fig. 4). 

11a 



162 APPENDIX C. 

2. Raise the right hand to the reach, the left following, grasp strongly with 
the hands and spring upwards from both knees. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the left hand down to the rest, the right following, grasp 
strongly and slip both knees down the distance of the step. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading. 

RIGHT SIDE LEADING. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 6. 1. As in fifth exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Raise the right hand to the reach and at the same 

time lift the right knee the distance of the step ; the left hand and left knee 

following the same distance. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down to the rest, and at the same time 
slip the right knee down the same distance, the left hand and knee following 
together on the left. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left side leading. 

RIGHT AND LEFT SIDE. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 
Exercise 7. 1. As in fifth exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Raise the right hand and knee as in preceding exer- 

cise ; raise the left hand and left knee the distance of the step beyond the 
right hand and right knee. Repeat, the leading hand and knee always pass- 
ing the supporting hand and knee. 

In descending, pass the leading hand down to the rest, and at the same 
time slip the leading knee down the distance of the step. Repeat. 

RIGHT AND LEFT, HAND AND KNEE. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 8. 1. As in fifth exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Raise the right hand to the reach and at the same 

time lift the left knee the distance of the step ; raise the left hand to the reach 

and at the same time lift the right knee the distance of the step . Repeat. 

In descending, pass the leading hand down to the rest, and at the same 
time slip the leading knee down the distance of the step. Repeat. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 9 . 1. As in fifth exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Raise both hands to the reach, grasp the pole 

strongly and spring upward with both knees the distance of the step. 

Repeat. 

In descending, slip both hands down to the rest, grasp the pole strongly 
and slip both knees down the distance of the step. Repeat. 



APPENDIX C. 163 

THE SLANTING POLE. 

The first series of exercises on this machine, under the pole, are substan- 
tially the same as the corresponding series on the vertical pole, with this differ- 
ence, that their difficulty is much reduced by its inclined position. The hands 
still follow the same modes of action as on the vertical machine, but with less 
difficulty, and the lower limbs bear altogether a less important part in the 
step, and consequently receive less benefit from it. This machine may for 
these reasons be made introductory to the vertical one, when, as will some- 
times be the case, the simplest exercises on the latter are found too difficult 
for the beginner. 

The second series, above the pole, is also essentially initiatory, but is val- 
uable both in an elementary and practical sense. The exercises comprised in 
it are safe and interesting, besides giving much light and well distributed 
movement to both trunk and limbs ; as, the reach being made and the lower 
limbs drawn up, the elongation of the trunk is almost entirely effected by the 
action of the back and loins. 

The exercises in the third series, under the pole, are executed entirely by 
the upper part of the body and the upper limbs, thus corresponding with the 
second series on the vertical machine, but, as in the series corresponding with 
the first, they are of a much less arduous nature, owing to the inclined posi- 
tion of the machine. 

It will be seen that the first and third series of exercises on this machine 
entirely correspond with the first and second series on the pole in its vertical 
position, while every exercise is lessened in difficulty by its inclination ; and 
as this changed position presents another surface, a third and intermediate 
series is afforded of an entirely different character to either, in which the col- 
umn of the body is supported on the pole itself. This machine, therefore, is 
in all respects a valuable companion to the vertical one, with all the corres- 
ponding exercises slightly reduced in difficulty for the special practice of less 
able beginners. 

The position of the instructor should be under the pole, because all falls 
from this machine will be under it ; except when the climber is learning the 
movements of the step in the second series, when the instructor should be in 
front of the pole behind the climber in order to direct his efforts. 

The Slanting Pole should be 3 inches in diameter, and not less than 15 feet 
or more than 20 feet in length, and laid at an angle of about 45 degrees. 

First Series Under the pole. 

Second Series Above the pole. 

Third Series Hands only. 

i 

LEFT HAND LEADING. 

First Series. Position of attention, under the pole. 

Exercise 1. 1. Advance the left hand to the reach and grasp the 

Course I. pole, the right following ; lift the left foot from the ground 

and place it against the right side of the pole underneath, the knee to the left; 
lift the right foot and place the heel over the pole, the ankles crossing, the 



164 APPENDIX C. 

outside edges of the feet together, the pole between them (Pig. 1), straighten 
the legs and elongate the trunk, the column of the body at the incline of the 
Fig. 1. Fig. 2. Fig. 3. 




pole, the head slightly held back, the eyes directed to the reach of the hands 
(Fig. 2) 

2. Advance the left hand to the reach (Fig. 3), the right following, draw up 
the lower limbs without bending the arms, as in Fig. 1, straighten the legs 
and elongate the trunk to the rest of the hands. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down to the rest, the left following, and 
lower the body to the reach of the hands. Repeat 

This exercise to be repeated with the right hand leading. 

HAND OVER HAND. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 2. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course I. 2. Advance the left hand to the reach, as in Fig. 3, draw 

up the lower limbs, without bending the arm, straighten the knees and elon- 
gate the trunk to the rest of the right hand. Repeat, raising the right hand 
to the reach ; the right and left hand alternating throughout. 

In descending, slip the leading hand down to the rest, lower the body to 
the reach of the suppporting hand. Repeat. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 3. 1. Advance both hands to the reach and grasp the pole ; 

Course II. lift both feet from the ground and clasp the pole in the 

position of first exercise. The rest of the body in the position of first exer- 
cise (Fig. 2). 

2. Shoot up both hands to the reach, draw up the lower limbs without 
bending the arms, and elongate the trunk to the rest of the hands. Repeat. 

In descending, slip both hands down to the rest, lower the body to the 
reach of the hands. Repeat. 



APPENDIX- C. 



165 



Fig. 4. 



WITH ONE HAND. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 
Exercise 4. 1. Advance the right hand to the 

Course III. reach and grasp the pole, spring from 
the ground and clasp the pole with the feet as in. 
first exercise, bringing the right hand to the half 
reach, and placing the left hand on the hip joint 
the fingers to the front, the thumb to the rear, the 
rest of the body in the position of first exercise 
{Fig. 4). 

2. Tighten the clasp of the feet, raise the right 
hand to the reach, draw up the lower limbs, straight- 
en the knees and elongate the trunk. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down to the 
rest, lower the body to the half reach of the hand. 
Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand. 



LEFT HAND LEADING. 

Secoitd Series. Position of attention, facing the pole, the toes touching 
Exercise 5* it. 

Course I. 1. Stoop forward and grasp the pole with the left hand, 

the right following immediately under it, slowly extend the trunk of the body 
along its surface ; lift the left foot from the ground and place it against the 
right side of the pole, the knee on the left ; lift the right foot from the ground 
and place it under the pole, clasping it with the back of the ankle, the trunk 
of the body in a straight line along its surface, the head slightly held back, 
the eyes directed to the reach of the hands (Fig. 5), straighten the legs and 
elongate the trunk (Fig. 6). 

Fig. 5. Fig. 6. Fig. 7. 





166 



APPENDIX C. 



2. Advance the left hand to the reach (Fig. 7), the right following, draw up 
the lower limbs without bending the arms, straighten the knees and elongate 
the trunk to the rest of the hands. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down to the rest* the left following, 
lower the body to the reach of the hands. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the right hand leading. 

HAND OVER HAND. 

Second Series. Position as in fifth exercise. 
Exercise 6. 1. As in fifth exercise. 

Course I. 2. Advance the left hand to the reach, as in Fig. 7, draw 

up the lower limbs, without bending the arm, straighten the knees and elon- 
gate the trunk to the rest of the right hand. Repeat, raising the right hand 
to the reach, the right and left hand alternating throughout. 

In descending, slip the leading hand down to the rest, lower the body to 
the reach of the supporting hand. Repeat. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

Second Series. Position as in fifth exercise. 

Exercise 7. 1. As in fifth exercise. 

Course II. 2. Shoot up both hands to the reach, draw up the lower 

limbs without bending the arms, straighten the knees and elongate the trunk 

to the rest of the hands. Repeat. 

In descending, slip both hands down to the rest, lower the body to the reach 
of the hands. Repeat. 

LEFT HAND LEADING. 

Third Series. Position of attention, under the pole. 

Exercise 8. 1. Advance the left hand and grasp the pole, the right 

Course HI. following ; lift both feet from the ground, bringing the 

Fig. 8. Fig. 9. 




APPENDIX C 167 

hands to the half reach, the legs together and straight, the feet together with 
the toes pointed downwards, the chest advanced, the shoulders square to the 
front, the neck free, the head slightly held back, the eyes directed to the front, 
the chin elevated (Fig. 8). 

2. Advance the left hand to the reach (Fig. 9), the right following, bend the 
arms until the hands are at the half reach. 

In descending, slip the right hand down to the rest, the left following. 
Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the right hand leading. 

HAND OYER HAND. 

Third Series. Position as in eighth exercise. 

Exercise 9. 1. As in eighth exercise. 

Course III. 2. Advance the left hand to the reach, as in Fig. 9, leav- 

ing the right at the half reach ; bend the left arm until the hand is at the half 
reach and raise the right hand to the reach. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the leading hand down to the rest, leaving the support- 
ing hand at the reach. Repeat. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

Third Series. Position as in eighth exercise. 

Exercise 10. 1. As in eighth exercise. 

Course III. 2. Shoot up both hands the distance of the step, but re- 

taining the arms bent at the half reach. Repeat. 

In descending, slip both hands down the distance of the step, retaining the 
arms bent as in the ascent. Repeat. 



THE PAIR OF VERTICAL POLES. 

The range of exercises on this machine is not wide, but every one is of a 
high class ; they are all arduous, and are approached through those of the 
single pole. The learner should never be allowed to attempt them until he is 
master of the second series on the single pole. 

When well executed they are very elegant, and show at a glance the power 
at the command of the climber, the body being sustained in perfect position 
between the poles by the hand-grasp alone. For these reasons this machine 
is always a favorite with able climbers. 

The instructor must be careful to give the 'halt' whenever there is any kick 
or struggle of the lower limbs or trunk, or whenever the full step is not made 
by the hands, or the elevation of the trunk after the reach is not completed, 
indicating local or general fatigue, and therefore insecurity of grasp. This 
applies most especially to the last two exercises, where the feet are removed 
from the vertical line. 

In the fifth exercise the climber must be instructed to be careful to keep the 
feet between the poles and to guard against their passing to the rear with the 



168 



APPENDIX C. 



poles clashing in front ; in this exercise the knees should be kept well bent, 
the lifting of the lower limbs should be at the instant of the elevation of the 
hand, and the alternate action of the right and left sides should be rhythmical, 
both in the ascent and descent. Another point requiring attention in this 
exercise is, when the climber nears the top (supposing he is sufficiently ad- 
vanced to climb the length of the poles), that the 'halt' shall always be given 
and the climber not allowed to look upwards to ascertain his position ; it 
would be in this act that a loss of equilibrium would most readily occur. 

The instructor's place should be right or left of the poles, according as the 
climber shows a tendency to lose his equilibrium to front or rear, in order that 
he may be able to interpose his right hand in such a case. In the early prac- 
tice of the third and last exercises, two instructors, or an instructor and a 
monitor, should be placed right and left of the machine, on occasions when it 
is thought desirable to let the climber do his uttermost ; but, as above directed, 
for general practice the 'halt' should be given at the slightest indication of 
fatigue or failing power, and while he has yet strength to accomplish the 
descent. 

The Pair of Vertical Poles should be 1£ inch in diameter and 18 inches apart, 
and not less than 12 feet or more than 18 feet high. 

First Series Upright. 

Second Series Han ds reversed. 

Third Series ..Sitting. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING. 



Fig. 1. Fig. 2. First Series. Position of attention, between 

Exercise 1. the poles. 
Course II. 1. Raise the right hand to the 

reach and grasp the right pole, the left following 
on the left pole ; lift both feet from the ground, 
bringing the hands to the half reach, the shoul- 
ders flat, the chest advanced, the trunk of the 
body upright and held firm, the neck free, the 
chin elevated, the eyes directed to the front, 
the legs straight and together, the feet together, 
the toes pointed to the ground, the whole column 
of the body sustained in the line of the poles 
(Fig. 1). 

2. Raise the right hand to the reach (Fig. 2), 
the left following ; elevate the body to the half 
reach of the hands. Repeat. 
In descending, slip the right hand down to the 

rest, the left following ; lower the body to the half reach of the hands. 

Repeat. 
This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading. 




APPENDIX C. 



169 



HAND OVER HAND. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 2. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course III. 2. Eaise the right hand to the reach and elevate the body 

to the rest of the left hand ; raise the left hand to the reach and elevate the 

body to the rest of the right hand. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the leading hand down to the rest and lower the body to 
the reach of the supporting hand. Repeat. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 3 . 1. As in first exercise, raising both hands at the same time. 

Course III. 2. Shoot up both hands to the reach and elevate the body 

to the rest of the hands. Repeat. 

In descending, lower the body until the hands are at the reach ; slip both 
hands down to the rest. Repeat. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 4. 1. Stoop forward from the waist, bring- 

Course IV. ing the head and shoulders in front of the 

poles, bend the arms and draw up the hands to the rear until 
they are nearly as high as the armpits, and grasp the poles, 
the palms behind the poles, the thumbs to the front ; lift both 
feet from the ground, bending the legs, the feet to the rear, 
the toes pointed to the rear (Fig. 3). 

2. Slip the right hand up and grasp the pole, aiding it by 
tfhe elevation of the right side and right leg, the left hand fol- 
lowing, with the corresponding side and leg. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down and grasp the pole, 
and at the same time lower the right side and right leg, the 
left hand following with the corresponding side and leg. 
Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading. 

HAND OVER HAND. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 5. 1. As in fourth exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Slip the right hand up and grasp the pole, as in 

fourth exercise ; slip the left hand up the distance of the step beyond the 

right. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down and grasp the pole, as in fourth 
exercise ; slip the left hand down the distance of the step beyond the right. 
Repeat. 




170 



APPENDIX C. 



BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 6. 1. As in fourth exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Slip both hands up the distance of the step, and 

grasp the pole, retaining the arms bent. Repeat. 

In descending, slip both hands down the distance of the step, retaining the 
arms bent. Repeat. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING. 



Fig. 4. 




Third Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 7. 1. Raise both hands and grasp the 

Course IV. poles at the half reach ; lift both feet 

from the ground and extend the lower limbs horizon- 
tally at a right angle to the trunk, the legs straight and 
together, the feet together, the toes pointed to the 
front, the trunk of the body upright, the neck free, the 
head slightly held back, the eyes directed to the reach 
of the hands (Fig. 4). 

2. Raise the right hand to the reach and grasp the 
pole, the left following on the left; elevate the body to 
the half reach of the hands. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down and grasp 
the pole, the left following, and lower the body to the 
half reach of the hands. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading. 

HAND OVER HAND. 



Third Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 8. 1. As in seventh exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Raise the right hand to the reach, and grasp the pole 

raise the left hand to the reach and grasp the pole beyond the right, retaining 

the trunk and lower limbs in position. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down and grasp the pole; slip the left 
hand down and grasp the pole below the right, retaining the trunk and lower 
limbs in position. Repeat. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

Third Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 9. 1. As in seventh exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Raise both hands to the reach and grasp the poles- 

right and left, at the same time raising the trunk and lower limbs in position. 
Repeat. 

In descending, slip both hands down to the rest and grasp the poles right 
and left, retaining the body and lower limbs in position. Repeat. 



APPENDIX C. 



171 



THE PAIR OF SLANTING POLES. 

The exercises on this machine bear a great resemblance in character to the 
second series on the single slanting pole, and all are of an initiatory character. 
They are excellent for beginners, as giving much movement in a good posi- 
tion, and they yield also good practice for more advanced climbers, when the 
object is the attainment of speed in the step in both the ascent and descent. 
A chief point to be observed in them is, that the equipoise of the body shall 
be sustained by the 'rest' of the limbs, upper and lower ; and they are conse- 
quently very valuable for the strengthening of these parts. 

With beginners the instructor will require to be strict as to position and 
action, as on the accuracy of these depend the ease and safety of the ascent ; 
these correctly acquired, and the poles fixed securely, there is little or no dan- 
ger from falls, and none from any other source. Every opportunity should 
be seized of cultivating these exercises, for the reasons stated above, and also 
for the reasons advanced for the practice of those on the single slanting and 
turning poles. 

The position of the instructor should be on the left of the machine, facing it. 

The Pair of Slanting Poles should be similar to the single pole and laid at 
the same angle; they should be 14 inches apart. 

SINGLE 8ERIES. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING. 



Single Series. Position of attention, facing the poles, 

Exercise 1. close to them. 

Course I. 1. Lean forward, and with the right 

hand at the half reach grasp the right pole, the left hand fol- 
lowing on the left pole; lift the right foot from the ground and 
place the instep against the inside of the right pole, the knee 
on the outside, the lower part of the leg crossing the pole 
diagonally, the left following on the left pole; extend and 
sustain the trunk between and in the line of the poles, the head 
held back and the eyes directed to the reach of the hands 
(Fig. 1). 

2. Raise the right hand to the reach, the left following on 
the left pole, draw up the lower limbs and elongate the trunk 
to the rest of the hands. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the left hand down to the rest, the right 
following on the right pole, lower the body to the reach of the 
hands. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading. 



Fig. 1. 




172 



APPENDIX C. 



Fig. 2. 



RIGHT SIDE LEADING. 

Single Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 2. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course I. 2. Raise the right hand to the reach, 

and at the same time draw up the right foot (Fig. 2), elongate 
the trunk, and at the same time raise the left hand and left 
foot opposite the right hand and right foot. Repeat. 

In descending, pass the leading hand down to the rest, 
extending the corresponding leg, the supporting hand and 
foot following, at the same time lowering the body. Re- 
peat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left side leading. 

RIGHT AND LEFT SIDE. 



Single Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 3. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course II. 2. Raise the right hand to the reach, 

and at the same time draw up the right foot as in preceding exercise, elon- 
gate the trunk and raise the left hand and left foot the distance of the step 
beyond the right hand and right foot. Repeat. 

In descending, pass the leading hand to the rest, extending the correspond- 
ing leg; lower the body and at the same time pass the supporting hand the dis- 
tance of the step below the leading hand, and extend the corresponding leg. 

Repeat. 

RIGHT AND LEFT, HAND AND FOOT. 




Fig. 3. 



Slngle Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 4. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course II. 2. Raise the right hand to the reach, 

and at the same time draw up the left foot (Fig. 3), elongate 
the trunk and at the same time raise the left hand the distance 
of the step above the right, and the right foot the same dis- 
tance above the left. Repeat. 

In descending, pass the leading hand down to the rest, ex- 
tending the opposite leg, lower the body and at the same time 
pass the supporting hand down below the leading hand and 
extend the opposite leg. Repeat. 

BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 



Single Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 5» 1. As in first exercise. 

Course III. 2. Shoot up both hands to the reach, 

draw up the lower limbs, and elongate the trunk to the rest 
of the hands. Repeat. In descending, slip both hands down to the rest, and 
lower the body to the reach of the hands. Repeat. All the foregoing exer- 
cises to be repeated with the feet on the outside of the poles, the knees inside. 




APPENDIX C. 173 

THE VERTICAL ROPE. 

It will be seen by comparing the exercises on the vertical rope with those on 
its companion machine, the vertical pole, that there is a marked similarity be- 
tween them. 

In descending, slip both hands down to the rest, and lower the body to the 
reach of the hands. Repeat. 

The exercises on both machines divide themselves into two series, which are 
marked by the same distinctions, viz. that the exercises of the first are execut- 
ed by the effort of the entire body, and those of the second by the effort of the 
upper limbs alone. 

The first series on the rope is larger than on the pole, because it admits of a 
greater number of modes of employing the lower limbs; the 'full turn' and the 
'stirrup' being peculiar to the rope, and each of these is an admirable mode of 
climbing in both an elementary and a practical sense. In the latter view, the 
'stirrup' is specially valuable, as the rest in this position relieves the upper 
limbs, and in great measure sets one hand free to execute any purpose for 
which the ascent may have been made; this exercise can only be performed on 
a loose rope, and although a comparatively slow manner of ascending, it is 
generally found to be the easiest to beginners, as it affords a very firm support 
to the feet; these must only be lifted sufficiently high to bring the hand to the 
rest when the step is completed. 

The second series is in all respects identical with the corresponding one on 
the [pole, except that it contains no exercises with both hands at once ; this 
being possible only in the first series, where the clasp of the lower limbs holds 
the rope firm and straight, and thus enables the hands, without quitting the 
rope, to pass upwards. This series on the rope, however, admits of another 
exercise, in character almost identical with the seventh on the pair of poles, in 
which the lower limbs are held straight to the front at a right angle to the body 
of the climber and the machine. 

The first series should be carefully practised before the learner is allowed to 
begin the second ; and the instructor must be careful to give the 'half when 
the slightest symptom of fatigue or irregularity in the step appears. The 
learner should be instructed to be careful in keeping the column of the body 
perfectly upright in the line of the rope, and held close in, with the face at 
the hands, when at the rest; and also in keeping the eyes steadily directed to 
the reach of the hands, as recommended in the text, and on no account to 
direct them downwards, or far above the reach, or to allow the head to fall 
from the perpendicular line of . the body. Neglect of these rules does not 
merely involve the loss of equilibrium, but it distracts and divides the atten- 
tion of the climber, besides giving an appearance of timidity to his efforts. 

In the event of a slip the effort must be, not as with the pole, to slip down- 
ward, for the rope passing through the hands of a falling man would cut it to 
the bone, but to re-grasp the rope. In all the exercises of the second series 
care must be taken that the climber has no articles of clothing hanging loose 
or standing prominent about the breast or waist, especialy in the descent ; as, 



174 



APPENDIX C. 



after the sense of touch has been deadened by the climb, the hand may grasp 
these instead of the rope in passing to the rest. 

It is also most desirable to accustom the climber to halt more than once 
during the ascent, and to change from one exercise to another on each recom- 
mencement of it. This is useful, not only for elementary but for practical 
purposes as it enables the climber to continue his ascent far beyond the dis- 
tance attainable by a single mode of climbing, and also relieves, by a change 
of action and position, the parts engaged. 

The position of the instructor should be the same as with the vertical pole. 

The Vertical Rope may be of any length from 20 feet to 50 feet; there should 
be at least thi ee sizes in a gymnasium, of the respective diameter of 1 inch, 1£ 
inch, 2 inches. 

First Series .With Hands and Feet. 

Second Series With Hands Only. 

Third Series Sitting. 



RIGHT HAND LEADING. 

(the foot in the half turn.) 

First Series. Position of attention facing the rope. 

Exercise 1- 1. Raise the right hand to the reach and grasp the rope, 

cwtwstc t thfi left following (Fig 1); lift the right foot from the 

ground and place it ae-ainst the left side of the rope, the knee on the right side 
(Fig. 2); lift the left foot and place it in front of the rope, the ankles crossing, 
the outside edges of the feet together, the rope between them (Fig. 3); straighten 
the legs, elongate the trunk; the whole column of the body upright, the chest 
advanced, the shoulders flat, the elbows in by the sides, the hands at the half 
reach, the neck free, the head slightly bent back, the chin elevated, the eyes 
directed to the reach of the hands (Fig. 4). 

Fig. 1. Fig. 2, Fig. 3. Fig. 4. 




APPENDIX C. 



175 



2. Raise the right hand to the reach and grasp the rope, the left following : 
■draw up the lower limbs, slightly relaxing but without relinquishing the clasp 
of the feet and without bending the arms as in Fig. 3; tighten the clasp of the 
feet when elevated, straighten the knees and elongate the trunk to the rest of 
the hands as in Fig. 4. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the left hand down to the rest, and grasp the rope, the 
right following; lower the body to the reach of the hands, retaining the legs 
straight and the rope between the feet. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading, the left foot under 
the rope and the right above it. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING. 
(the foot in the full turn.) 
Fibst Series. Position as in first exercise. Fig. 5. 

Exercise 2. 1. Raise the right foot from the ground, 

Course I. and by a circular movement of the leg over 

the rope from the outside inwards, pass it round the leg so as to 
•encompass it by a full turn, commencing on the inner side of 
the thigh and terminating on the inner side of the foot (Fig. 5), 
the left foot as in first exercise. The rest of the body as in first 
exercise. 

2. Raise the right hand to the reach and grasp the rope, the 
left following; slacken the clasp of the feet, draw up the lower 
limbs without bending the arms, tighten the clasp of the feet, 
straighten the legs and elongate the trunk to the rest of the 
hands. Repeat. 

Descend as in first exercise. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading, the left 
foot making the full turn. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING. 

(the foot in the stirrup loop.) 
First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 3. 1. Lift the right foot from the ground 

Course I. and place it against the rope, as in first 

exercise. Lift the left foot from the ground and place it 
on the right side of the rope, and bringing it up from 
under the right with the end of the rope over the instep 
rest the front part of the sole on the front part of the instep 
of the right (Fig. 6); the rope thus being folded round the 
right foot, passing under its hollow, and tightly held in its place by the left 
over which it falls; straighten the legs and elongate the trunk to the half 
Teach of the hands, the rest of the body as in first exercise. 

2. Raise the right hand to the reach and grasp the rope, the left following, 
slacken the clasp of the feet, draw up the lower limbs without bending the 
arms, replace the left foot on the right, lifting the rope with it as before, 
straighten the knees and elongate the trunk to the rest of the hands. Repeat. 



Fig. 6. 




176 



APPENDIX C. 



At the last step, relinquish the loop and place the left foot over the right as in 
first exercise. 

Fig. 7. Descend as in first exercise. 

This exercise to be repeated with left hand leading and the left, 
foot in the stirrup loop. 

HAND OYER HAND. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 4. 1. As in first exercise. 

Course II. 2. Raise the right hand to the reach and 

grasp the rope (Fig. 7), draw up the lower limbs without bending 

the right arm, straighten the legs, and elongate the trunk to the 

rest of the right hand. Repeat, raising the left hand to the 

reach ; the right and left hand alternating throughtout. 

In descending, slip the leading hand down to the rest and grasp 
the rope, lower the body to the reach of the supporting hand, 
the rest of the body as in first exercise. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the feet in the positions of 
second and third exercises. 



HAND OVER HAND. 

(a second method.) 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 5 1. As in first exercise. 

Course II. 2. Raise the left hand to the half reach above the right, 

and raise the right to the reach above the left, draw up the lower limbs, 
straighten the legs, and elongate the trunk. Repeat. 
Descend as in fourth exercise. 

Fig. 8. BOTH HANDS AT ONCE. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 6- 1. Raise both hands to the reach and grasp 

Course II. the rope ; lift both feet from the ground and 

clasp the rope in the position of first exercise, bringing the hands 

to the half reach, as in Fig. 4, the rest of the body as in first 

exercise. 

2. Shoot up both hands to the reach, draw up the lower 
limbs without bending the arms, straighten the legs and elongate 
the trunk. Repeat. 

In descending, slip both hands down to the rest and grasp the 
rope, lower the body to the reach of the hands. Repeat. 

WITH ONE HAND. 

First Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 7. 1. Raise the right hand to the reach and 

Course IY. grasp the rope ; spring from the ground and 



APPENDIX C. 



177 



clasp the rope with the feet as in first exercise, bringing the right hand to the 
half reach ; place the left hand on the hip joint, the fingers to the front, the 
thumb to the rear, the rest of the body in the position of first exercise (Fig. 8). 

2. Tighten the clasp of the feet, raise the right hand to the reach, draw up 
the lower limbs without bending the arm, straighten the knees and elongate 
the trunk. Repeat. 

In descending, slip the right hand down to the rest, lower the body to the 
half reach of the hand. Repeat. 

This exercise to be repeated with the left hand. 

RIGHT HAND LEADING. Fig. 9. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 8. 1. Raise the right hand to the reach 

Course III. and grasp the rope, the left following ; 

lift both feet from the ground and pass them to the right side 
of the rope, the hands at the half reach, the legs together and 
straight, and slanting to the front, the toes pointed in the 
same direction, the trunk of the body held firm and upright, 
the chest advanced, the shoulders flat, the elbows in by the 
sides, the head slightly bent back, the eyes directed to the 
reach of the hands (Fig. 9). 

2. Raise the right hand to the reach and grasp the rope, the 
left following ; elevate the body to the half reach of the hands. 
Repeat. At the last step, clasp the rope with the feet, as in 
first exercise. 

Descend as in first exercise. 

This exercise to be repeated with the lower limbs on the left side- of the rope. 

These exercises to be repeated with the left hand leading 




HAND OVER HAND. 

Second Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 9. 1. Raise the right hand to the reach and 

Course III. grasp the rope, the left following ; lift both 

feet from the ground, raising the body until the hands are at the 
half reach, the legs straight and together, the toes pointed down- 
wards and slightly turned out (the rope lying between them), the 
column of the body perfectly upright and in the line of the rope, 
the head erect, the eyes directed to the reach of the hands (Fig. 10). 

2. Raise the right hand to the reach, elevating the body to the 
rest of the left ; raise the left hand to the reach, elevating the 
body to the rest of the right. Repeat. At the last step clasp 
the rope with the feet, as in fourth exercise. 

Descend as in fourth exercise. 



Fiff. 10. 



12a 



178 



APPENDIX C. 



Third Series. 
Exercise 10. 
Course IY. 

Fig. 11. 



RIGHT HAND LEADING. 

Position as in first exercise. 

1. Raise the right hand to the reach and grasp the rope, 
the left following ; bend the arms and lift both feet from 
the ground and extend the lower limbs hori- 
zontally on the right side of the rope, the 
legs straight and together, the feet together, 
the toes pointed to the front, the trunk of the 
body upright, the neek free, the head slightly 
bent back, the eyes directed to the reach of 
the hands (Fig. 11). 

2. Raise the right hand to the reach and 
grasp the rope, the left following; elevate 
the body to the half reach of the hands. Re- 
peat. At the last step, clasp the rope with 
the feet, as in first exercise. 
Descend as in fourth exercise. 
This exercise to be repeated with the left hand leading. 

HAND OVER HAND. 

Third Series. Position as in first exercise. 

Exercise 11. 1. As in tenth exercise. 

Course IV. 2. Raise the right hand to the reach and grasp the rope ; 

raise the left hand to the reach and grasp the rope beyond the right, retaining 
the body and lower limbs in position. Repeat. 
Descend as in first or fourth exercise. 




THE ROSARY. 



The single exercise on this machine is a very valuable one for elementary 
practice, as it shows at a glance the perfect action of the step on all climbing 
apparatus ; for it is on this only that the perfect rest for the foot, and the 
adequate fulcrum for the effort in straightening the knee and elongating the 
trunk, are obtained. When, therefore, it is desirable to show to a beginner 
the precise movements which go to make the step in climbing, and their 
sequence, he should be taken to the rosary and have there explained to him 
that these same consecutive movements compose the step on all climbing 
machines where both hands and feet are engaged ; the firmness of the clasp of 
the lower limbs supplying the rest presented to the soles of the feet by the 
beads of the rosary. 

As a purely elementary exercise it is valuable also on account of the employ- 
ment which it gives to the muscles of the back. 

In the initiatory instruction care must be taken that the climber preserves 
the position perfectly, for the tendency of the action of straightening the 
knee is to push the feet to the front, and with them the lower part of the 
rosary, thus throwing the weight of the body on the arms. 



APPENDIX C. 



179 



The position- of the instructor should be immediately beneath and behind 
the climber, with the right hand disengaged, and the left steadying the ma- 
chine. 

The Rosary consists of a vertical rope, on which are strung, at intervals of 
from 12 to 18 inches, elm beads, turned to the shape of a half ball, 4 inches in 
diameter, the flat side being upwards. The rope should not be less than 15 
feet or more than 20 feet high. 

(single seeies.) 

THE SIMPLE CLIMB. 

Single Series. Position of attention, facing the rosary. 

Single Exercise. 1. Raise the right hand to the reach and grasp the 

Course I. rope, the left following ; lift both feet from the ground 

and place them on the first bead (Fig. 1), the heels together, the toes pointed 
to the front, the rope as it were rising from the hollow between the feet and 
ascending in front of the ankle joint ; straighten the knees and elevate the 
body to the half reach of the hands, the trunk upright, the chest advanced, 
the shoulders flat and square to the front, the head slightly held back, the 
eyes directed to the reach of the hands (Fig. 2). 

Fig. 1. Fig. 2. Fig. 3. 





2. Raise the right hand to t&ie reach, the left following (Fig. 3), lift both 
feet and place them on the second bead, straighten the knees and elongate 
the trunk. Repeat. 

In descending, pass the left hand down to the rest, the right following ; 
Blightly separate the feet, and retaining the lower limbs perfectly straight and 
the rest of the body in position, lower the feet to the next bead. Repeat. 

This exercise may be varied and the difficulty progressively increased by 
passing one, two, or more beads at each step, giving special care to the hand- 
grasp during the elongatory movement of the trunk. 



180 APPENIDX C. 

TO REST ON THE ROSARY. 

First Method. Press the chest and shoulders to the front, thereby bring- 
ing the weight almost entirely on the feet. 

Second Method. Press the breast, cheek, and temple of one side against the 
rope, at the same instant relieving, by change of posi- 
tion, the corresponding hand. 

Third Method. Pass both feet to the front, and sit on the nearest bead. 
The entire descent may be made in this manner. 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF CERTAIN FORMS OF GROWTH AND DEVEL- 
OPMENT, REGULAR AND IRREGULAR, AT DIFFERENT AGES. 

Fig. 1. Bust and Upper Limbs, showing perfectly regular and complete 
developments. Age 23. 

" 2. Arm (larger scale), showing very powerful developments. Age 24. 

" 3. Bust and Upper Limbs, showing regular and uniform developments. 
Age 18. 

" 4. Bust and Upper Limbs, showing regular but imperfect develop- 
ments. Age 18. 

" 5. Bust and Upper Limbs, showing irregular growth ;— ' growing on 
one side/ Age 10. 

" 6. Back and Upper Limbs, showing similar irregularity of growth. 
Age 13. 

" 7. Back, showing spinal curvature. 

" 8. Back, showing spinal curvature. Another form. 

" 9. Bust, showing 'hollow chest/ Age 20. 

" 10. Bust and Upper Limbs, showing 'drooping shoulders/ Age 20. 

" 11. Bust showing 'pigeon breast ;' side view. Age 10. 

" 12. Bust (of same individual), showing 'pigeon breast ;' front view. 

" 13. Bust, showing imperfectly developed chest. Age 21. 

" 14. Bust (of same individual), showing nature and extent of expansion 
of chest after a year's practice of systematized exercise. 






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